Radioactive
by hannahmanderrr
Summary: Because you don't just get up after having an entire world open up inside of you and walk away like nothing happened. Because it takes much longer than a month to recover from your own death. Because you don't just become a superhero overnight.
1. Chapter 1

He immediately regretted trying to open his eyes.

The lights were all too bright and overstimulating. Blurs of color whizzed by far too quickly, making him feel dizzy. Everything was out of focus and distant; it gave him a sense of displacement. The sensory overload made him yearn for the safety and peace of the darkness he was used to, even if it was boring.

The closed his eyes and kept them that way, but the blinding lights still shone through his eyelids, creating a strange reddish color. He waited a moment - _a minute? an hour? a lifetime?_ \- and slowly cracked his eyes open again. This time, the lights were nowhere near as intense as before, from a blinding supernova to a burning sun. Still too bright for his taste, but much better than before. The blurs of color were coming into focus at a snail's pace, becoming somewhat recognizable shapes.

 _People?_

He closed his eyes once again. He wasn't ready to deal with people, not yet.

Even worse - _and so much more interesting_ \- were the sounds. A conglomeration of noises was assaulting his fragile ears. It all blended into a mess of unintelligible white noise, impossible to discern one from another. And it was all so loud.

 _Focus. Concentrate. What are you hearing?_

There. Just barely, but there. The steady beeping of a machine. The sound sang out above the amalgamation, becoming clearer and clearer with each passing second. And then there, something else separating itself. The telltale click of heels on a hard floor. Finally, ever so slowly, people's voices began to emerge.

 _But what are they saying?_

Then, almost as if out of the blue, one voice rang loud and clear above the others, sweet and soothing and familiar. This voice was relaxing and safe, and it made him realize that he was in a place that couldn't be completely unfamiliar. Home was sitting there, right beside him.

"Danny?"

 _Danny._

It echoed in his head, bouncing around endlessly. The way the voice spoke it, it sounded like it had rolled off its tongue, as if it had been spoken a million times before in a million different ways.

However meaningful to the voice's owner, the mish-mosh of syllables was meaningless to him. Just another noise to add in with the others.

 _No. Not meaningless_.

His name. Danny was his name - _had he ever even forgotten it?_ \- and as astonishing as the discovery was initially, the wonder quickly wore off. His name was relatively unimportant in the grand scheme of things; it didn't help him find out much more about his situation. There was no need for -

"Danny, please, wake up…"

The voice was full of a sad hope, the kind of hope a person clings to as a last resort when everything else is lost. The kind of hope a person uses to trick themselves into believing that things will turn out okay, even when the worst is inevitable. The kind of hope that - _only when coming from this voice_ \- shattered his heart and made him question whether it was worth it, staying sheltered in the darkness.

 _No. Wake up. Why are you even asleep?_

He felt a previously dormant vigor bubble up inside of him. As much as he hated the idea of emerging from his safe, dark cocoon, there was no sense in allowing someone to suffer just so he could have a pleasant experience.

 _What kind of hero would you be otherwise?_

The thought came out of left field. He'd never really considered himself a hero. Of course, that didn't mean he didn't think it was cruel to let the poor, sad voice continue living in misery.

But he didn't open his eyes. Not yet, it was too soon. He was still struggling to make out what the other voices were saying around him, and adding in the bright visuals would be far too overwhelming.

"... _awake?_ "

"... _is impossible, he_ …"

"... _seen something_ …"

The bits and pieces of conversation he could interpret only added to his confusion. Forget what they were saying, these voices weren't familiar at all and made him feel uncomfortable. Where on earth was he where so many strangers were around him? Were they talking about him, too?

 _Remember the first voice. How it made you feel._

Why did it matter so much? He already knew how the voice felt to him. Yet even as the thought crossed his mind, he was struck with a new sense of familiarity. A memory flew by, followed by another, then another, then a swarm. All of them repeating his name - _Danny_ \- all of them accompanied by a petite figure surrounded by a blue aura.

 _It's a woman. Who is she?_

His mother. Or was it? He felt a jolt of unease as he realized he wasn't one hundred percent certain. Shouldn't he be able to recognize his own mother? As hard as he attempted to identify the woman, his memory was foggy and jumbled. Trying to make any sense of the puzzle that was his memory only gave him a headache, and it grew worse with each passing second.

A second later, it dawned on him that he was actually feeling. He became aware of his arms and legs, all of which felt like dead weight dragging him down. His entire body was sore, and he couldn't help but suspect he was supposed to feel a whole lot worse. There was a fine weight settled on top of his legs and torso all the way up to his chest. His head was elevated, resting on something soft and comfortable.

And he was cold. So cold he should've been shivering, but he wasn't. Even stranger was that the cold felt normal, as familiar as the woman's voice.

The fact that he was able to feel excited him. It was something new and different, and although his dark shroud of peace was enticing, he had a new itch to see what was going on outside of his own little world, to try and figure out exactly what was going on.

 _You just need to open your eyes. Just open them, and you'll get the answers you're looking for._

He hesitated. Somehow, deep down, he knew that opening his eyes this time meant waking up permanently. There would be no returning to his quiet world of darkness. He would have to be prepared to face whatever was out there and take it head on whether he was ready or not.

 _Do it. Do it for her._

And with that thought, he opened his eyes.

Somehow, the lights seemed even brighter than before, and he could feel tears prickle up in his eyes from the sheer intensity. Still, he blinked them away, trying to drink in the world around him.

Most of the room he was in was a cold, uninviting white, which did not help with the brightness at all. Sunlight flooded the room, only adding to the brilliance of it all. Most figures were still somewhat out of focus, but he could get a general idea of what was happening. Like there, standing in the corner of the room, a man dressed in a long white coat, staring intently at a clipboard and muttering to himself. And standing directly in front of him, a woman, dressed in a sharp, scarlet business suit and holding a pad and pen. Beside her, another man, this one dressed in casual jeans and a bomber jacket, holding a fancy looking camera hoisted onto his shoulder.

Movement out of the corner of his eye caught his attention. This was another woman, dressed in a strange turquoise outfit. She was beaming down at him with pure, unadulterated joy. Tears were falling freely down her pale cheeks, but her deep blue eyes - _so blue they were almost violet_ \- were burning with a fire of passion and love. Seeing her sitting beside him, thrilled to be looking at him in the eye, triggered a flood of memories.

 _Yes. This is your mother_.

"Danny," she whispered, her voice cracking with emotion, "I've missed you so much."

He wanted to open his mouth and respond to her, but something was keeping his lips firmly shut. With great effort - _and a lot of pain_ \- he reached up with his right arm to get rid of whatever was keeping his mouth closed. He paused, however, when he caught sight of a little box clamped around index finger and a small tube sticking out from the back of his hand.

Those would have to come off too, but speaking to his mother was more important right now. Slowly, shaking with effort, he reached up towards his mouth. Much to his surprise, he felt another tube prying his lips open and shoving itself down his throat. His mouth wasn't shut at all, it was clamped around the tube. He couldn't open his mouth any further.

He grabbed at the tube to try and pull it out, but a black glove gently pulled his hand away. He looked up to see his mother shaking her head at him, but she was still smiling. He was vaguely remembered of another time when she'd responded in the same exact way when he got caught picking at a scab.

He tried to shake his head back at her to tell her that no, he was fine, all he needed to do was get the stupid tube out of his mouth so that he could talk to her, but he was stunned when he found that he couldn't. He reached up again, tentatively this time, only to feel something cold and metal surrounding his neck and pressing up against his chin. It held his head and neck in place, refusing to give him any sort of leeway. Was it a neck brace?

 _Just what on earth happened to you?_

"Danny." A voice to his left interrupted his thoughts, catching his attention. This voice was unfamiliar, a smooth baritone. Slowly, he looked over to see the man in the long white coat leaning over him.

"Danny, my name is Dr. Rosenburg," he said. He spoke slowly, clearly, and loudly, as if he were talking to a small child. "Can you hear me? Blink twice if you understand me."

He registered absentmindedly that hearing and understanding were two completely different things, but he obliged anyway, blinking once, then twice.

The doctor smiled, but it didn't quite reach his stormy gray eyes. "That's very good to hear, Danny," he said. What was his name again? It'd already been lost in the sea of other half-baked memories dancing in his head. "You were in a very serious accident; you're in the hospital now. Don't worry though, you're going to be just fine."

All other thoughts came to a crashing halt as this new information came in an onslaught. An accident? He'd gotten hurt? By who? Or by what? Desperately, he racked his jumbled memory, frantically trying to produce an answer. Nothing about any sort of accident came up in his search; he couldn't remember anything.

 _Do you even want to remember?_

The doctor was continuing on as if nothing had happened. "You've been asleep for almost five weeks now. We've actually been quite worried about you for awhile. We were starting to think you might not wake up."

Five weeks.

More than a month of solitude from the outside world.

His thirst for answers grew along with his confusion. What had he done or where on earth had he been to put him in the hospital for so long, asleep for all that time? He tried searching his memory once more for something - _anything, really_ \- to give him at least a semblance of an answer.

The last thing he remembered. It was there, mixed up in the cocktail of other seemingly meaningless memories. It was fuzzy and extremely vague, but it was there. He'd been chatting online with his two friends - _but what were their names?_ \- and then he went downstairs to meet his dad, who had been nagging at him to come for a while at that point. Then… he woke up.

 _But that's not the whole story, is it?_

He looked back at his mother, hoping she would at least have some answers for him, but she just kept smiling down encouragingly at him, letting the doctor do the talking. The lady and the cameraman were not much help either. She was scribbling on her pad as fast as she could, and the man had his camera trained on him, a small red light blinking on the top.

The doctor was speaking again, but not to him. "Mrs. Fenton," he asked kindly, "do you mind if we do a few tests on your son? We need to check and see how his recovery is progressing."

He wanted to scream that no, he wanted his mother to stay by his side, to give him the answers he was looking for, but she rose slowly, stroking his cheek as she did so. Tears were falling from her eyes again, and her encouraging smile had turned into a sad one. "Of course," she said, her eyes never leaving him. "I'll be right back, okay Danny? Just don't go anywhere."

He could only watch helplessly as his mother left him alone in this strange room with these strangers in this strange situation. As the doctor ushered the lady and the man out of the room too, he kept his eyes trained on the door, attempting to will his mother back into the room. Who cared about some stupid tests? All that mattered was his mother.

"Alright then," the doctor said, turning back to him. "Let's see just how well you're doing shall we? Don't worry, I promise I won't hurt you one bit."

The doctor had lied.

Shining a bright light into his eyes was certainly not pain free. Getting hit in his knee, in his elbow, while he was already so sore was not pain free. Even trying to move on his own, clenching his fist when the doctor told him to, was not pain free.

After finally deciding he was aware enough to continue, the doctor told him they would be going to a different room for a different kind of test. He did not elaborate. As a nice, young lady dressed in dark blue arrived to help the doctor wheel him in the bed he was laying in, he grew excited. Maybe he'd get to see his mother again.

Instead, they wheeled him down a series of winding hallways, making him dizzy. Other doctors and nurses bustled around the strange trio, tending to their own patients and running their own tests. Machines were beeping in an odd cacophony of tones and rhythms, and a lady's voice was calling above him, asking repeatedly for a Dr. Malikova. It was all becoming too overstimulating again.

Finally, after what seemed like forever, the doctor and the nurse steered him into a room labeled "MRI." He vaguely recognized the letters as some sort of test they did by using brain scans, but he couldn't remember exactly how said brain scans were recorded.

The doctor left, mostly speaking to the nurse when he said he was going to prepare the actual testing room with the technicians. She stayed. She came around to where he could see her, and she smiled down at him warmly. "Hiya, Danny," she said. Her voice was unfamiliar just like most of the others he'd heard, but this one was less unsettling. It was like honey, he decided. "My name's Linda. I've been taking care of ya for awhile now, so it's kinda cool to see ya finally awake. I'll tell ya, you gave most people around here a good scare when you first came in."

 _Yes, you already knew that much. But what happened to make them scared?_

"Now this test is gonna be super easy," she continued. "In fact, you don't even have to do anything. You just get to lay there and enjoy yourself. It won't hurt a bit, I promise!"

That's what the doctor had said, too, and his tests were somewhat painful. Before he could try and express this, however, the doctor came sweeping back in, ushering him and the nurse into the testing room.

This room was a cold, sterile white as well, and it was just as bare as the room he'd woken up in, too. There were three technicians, each dressed in brown and each scrambling to prepare for his tests.

What stood out the most, however, was the huge, tube-like machine in the center of the room. It had a hard outer covering, but it almost looked like a soft pillow on the inside. There was an opening in the middle, not big at all. He figured he couldn't sit up straight and still fit even if he was able to sit himself up. A table with a tiny pillow on it was waiting to cart him into the hole.

He stared at the machine. Overall, there was something unnervingly familiar about it. A pit settled in his stomach, and it seemed to grow exponentially. Why did the portal seem to -

\- _blinding green light_ -

\- _burning electricity_ -

\- _white hot pain_ -

Panic flooded his veins and icy cold fear drilled into his heart. Flashes of memory - _terrible memory_ \- absorbed him. He began to thrash around violently, disregarding any pain. A tube fell onto him, trickling clear liquid; blood began to seep down the back of his hand. Terror-stricken gurgles came from his throat, causing the tube lodged in there to jostle and get stuck. All logical reasoning escaped like a cloud.

 _ **Do not go in there!**_

Reality was distorted. There was the doctor, calling for help from someone, and there was his sister - _is that even her?_ \- screaming as he laid motionless on the floor. There was the nurse, restraining him and holding him with every last bit of her strength, and there was a paramedic yelling code blue over and over again as they sped along. There was the sharp jab of a needle in his arm, and there was the deafening click of a button.

There was a flash of light.

And there was nothing.

…

…

…

…..

….

There was nothing.

He was floating in a blank dream. Far away from the rest of the world. This was peace. This was so much nicer than wherever he'd been, where…

Where…

 _Where were you? What happened?_

And yet even as the thought fluttered by, soft and silent, he paid no attention to it. He paid no attention to anything. He was unconscious to everyone and everything, even himself. He had returned to his small little bubble world of absolutely nothing.

Even though he was not there to experience it, the world continued to turn. Seconds melted into minutes melted into hours melted into days. Outside of the hospital, people went about their daily lives, blissfully unaware of him and his solitude. Inside the hospital, patients came and patients went, each with an untold story of their own. And there inside his room where he laid unmoving, snippets of hushed conversation were passed around the room, some caught by his ears, never to be understood, never to be processed, never to be remembered.

"... _severe PTSD_ …"

"... _more extensive than_ …"

"... _may not return_ …"

But he drifted, forever swimming in a vast sea of nothingness. No direction or guidance. No memory to wake him or to aid him. No thoughts of what to do or where to go.

Nothing but the infinite realms of

dead

empty

space.

….

…..

…

…

…


	2. Chapter 2

It was four days before Danny reawakened.

Compared to five weeks, four days was an eternity, both for Danny and the world around him. The universe seemed to be holding its breath in anticipation, all for a small, insignificant teenager in a little town called Amity Park.

Over those endless four days, Amity Park changed. Never enough for it to truly be noticed by any of its residents, but enough for them to tilt their heads every now and then and pay attention to the strange feeling of instinct in their gut. Something was wrong, the instinct would tell them, but it was always so quiet, always just the barest flit of a thought, that it never broke the surface of the conscious.

And so Amity Park's citizens continued with their daily lives, unaware of the birds that had stopped singing every morning; unaware of the people outside their sleepy little town, subconsciously changing their travel plans so they could avoid Amity Park; unaware of the intrusive throb of an invasive heartbeat, one that did not quite fit in with the rhythm of the Earth.

Changes were felt much more intensely near Amity Park's only hospital. Passersby would circumvent the hospital, telling themselves traffic around it was always terrible, even though it was never the case. The staff continued with their work, plagued with a constant sense of unease, especially when they neared the ICU. Every now and then a chill would shiver its way down someone's spine, brushed off as a malfunction of the ventilation system.

And through all of this, young Danny slept, never taking notice of the evolving environment around him.

On the morning of the fifth day, at 9:54 a.m. EST, Danny awoke once more and the universe released its breath.

At 8:54 a.m. CST, a man in Wisconsin straightened suddenly at his desk. The world had suddenly shifted violently, and he could feel it. He was struck with an emotion he was quite unfamiliar with, one he never hoped to experience again.

The clock ticked to 8:55 and the feeling was gone.

In room 104 of the ICU at Amity Park General Hospital, startling blue eyes flickered wide open. If one had been watching very closely, they might have caught a glimpse of a spark of an odd shade of green, but they would quickly blow it off as a reflection of the equipment in the room.

However, there was nobody watching Danny closely enough to see this. The only other person in the room at 9:54 a.m. was a young boy in glasses and a red cap tapping away on his cell phone. He was watching the screen so intently that he did not notice when Danny's eyes fluttered open. He did notice, though, a second later when a shrill alarm pierced the relative silence of the room.

Danny's hands clapped over his ears in an instant, and the boy jumped up out of his chair, his phone clattering to the floor. He was at Danny's bedside in seconds, wondering why he appeared so pained by the noise. Granted he'd just been locked away in a world of total silence for almost six weeks, but the alarm wasn't that loud.

And then the boy seemed to actually realize there was an alarm going off and his friend was obviously not okay, for lack of better articulation. His mouth dropped open and he spluttered for a moment before managing to whisper "Danny?" He grabbed Danny's hand and tried to pry it away from his head, but Danny held steadfast, his face wrenched into a twisted expression of pain.

The boy was at a loss. He had certainly not imagined this being the scene when he first saw Danny awake. He'd had something much quieter, much more intimate in mind. Now the world had been thrown into chaos and Danny could be dying right now and what kind of a friend was he being just standing there slack-mouthed while his friend deteriorated before his very eyes?

A young man with shaggy brown hair dressed in dark blue scrubs burst into the room. "Young man, I need you to step back please," he ordered sharply, not even giving the boy a second glance.

He obeyed, muttering under his breath, "My name is Tucker." Of all the things he could've said in this moment, he picked that?

The nurse (he had to be a nurse, all the nurses in the hospital wore dark blue) scanned the monitors that surrounded Danny until his eyes landed on one with a few different colored lines on it, one of which was completely flat. The boy, Tucker, followed the nurse's gaze until he too caught sight of the monitor. His heart dropped into his stomach like a pit.

 _Oh God, his heart stopped._

Except something didn't seem right, and both Tucker and the nurse seemed to realize this. Someone who was going into cardiac arrest wouldn't be digging the heels of their palms into their head, visibly cringing and fully awake.

The nurse leaned over Danny's bed, running a hand over the sheet. Tucker simply stood and watched, still blown away by the sheer shock of the situation. The alarm continued to shriek, and Tucker found himself wanting to strangle the machine. Yes, it was obvious that something was very wrong, even if his heart hadn't necessarily stopped. Why did it need to keep reminding him of that fact?

After an eternity, the nurse plucked something off the bed, something connected to a wire. Carefully and forcefully, he managed to pull Danny's left hand away from his ear. Tucker watched as the nurse took the box-looking thing on the end of the cord and clipped it onto Danny's finger.

There was a beat, and there was silence.

Time seemed to stand still for a moment. The nurse's hand lingered on Danny's, watching the monitor earnestly for a change. Tucker stepped forward without realizing it, his hand lifting towards his friend. Danny's face still stayed wound up in its grimace of pain.

And then time moved on.

A collective breath seemed to escape the room. Tucker sighed in relief in tandem with the nurse when a much softer, steady chirp began echoing in the silence. Danny seemed to realize that the alarm had finally stopped, and his face relaxed, replaced with a look of confusion. His other hand lowered from his ear and dropped limply at his side. Tucker saw his friend's eyes for the first time in a month and a half, but it was strange looking at them. They were overly dilated from being in the darkness of sleep for so long; only a thin blue ring surrounded Danny's pupils.

Tucker should've felt overjoyed to see his friend awake, ecstatic even, but apprehension settled into his stomach, causing it to twist. He decided that it was due to the strangeness of seeing Danny awake but still hooked up to all those machines and in that neck brace. When he'd been asleep, it hadn't felt as real. Tucker could just pretend that everything was okay and that the machines were just for show. But now, seeing Danny awake and aware and utterly confused and terrified solidified the severity of the situation in Tucker's mind.

Everything had been uncomfortably real. Danny had actually been in an accident, so bad no one in his family would tell Tucker. He'd literally been dead for several minutes before the doctors were able to revive him. He'd really been in a coma for six weeks, using machines to help him do things that should've just been instinct - eating, going to the bathroom.

Breathing.

It was then at 9:56 a.m. that Tucker decided he hated hospitals.

"Danny," the nurse was saying. Danny winced as best as he could with a tube stuck in his mouth. As to why, Tucker did not know. "My name is Rory. I'm your nurse. Can you hear me?"

Something akin to recognition (or maybe deja vu?) flashed in Danny's eyes, but only for the briefest of moments. Unable to nod his head, he blinked twice.

"Alright, good," Rory said, but he was not smiling. "Hey, listen buddy, I know all these wires and things you're connected to can be uncomfortable and annoying, but you gotta leave them on, okay? Taking off your heart rate monitor like that makes us think you're in big trouble."

Confusion returned. Danny's eyebrows furrowed as he processed what the nurse was saying, and Tucker's eyes flickered back and forth between his friend and Rory. Something smelled off about the situation, but he couldn't put his finger on it.

The nurse was looking at Danny's monitors, and his frown deepened. Tucker could practically see the gears turning in his head, and Danny watched with equal interest.

Rory turned to Tucker. "Can you keep an eye on him for a minute? I need to go discuss something with Danny's doctor."

Tucker nodded mutely. The nurse turned and left without another word, leaving him and Danny alone with only the rhythmic pulse of Danny's heart rate monitor to accompany them.

The feeling of dread grew in Tucker's stomach as he looked down at Danny, who was still completely confused. An idea was nagging at him in the back of his head, but Tucker wasn't sure he wanted to acknowledge it. Then, against his better interests, he blurted out his first words to his best friend in six long weeks.

"You never actually took the heart monitor off, did you?"

The look in Danny's eyes told him all he needed to know.

* * *

The drive from the Fenton Works to Amity Park General Hospital took about nine minutes on a day with good traffic.

When Jack Fenton was at the wheel, the drive took about five minutes.

When Maddie Fenton was at the wheel and she had just received a gut-wrenching call from her son's doctor, the drive took exactly three minutes.

 _You should get down here when you can, Mrs. Fenton_ , is what the doctor had said. Not, _your son is awake and he'd like to see you_. Not, _Danny is recovering nicely, we're taking him off some of his support systems and we thought you might like to be here to see it_.

Doctors only withheld information when things were starting to go south. Maddie had enough experience to know this for a fact.

At 10:17 a.m., Maddie barged into the lobby of the hospital and immediately made her way to the ICU, blowing past the front receptionist. She was practically running down the hallways, and everyone in her path parted like the Red Sea. No one was going to keep her from seeing her Danny.

In the ICU, she slammed her fist down on the receptionist's counter, causing the tiny lady behind it to jump about three feet out of her chair. "Where is my son?" Maddie demanded, her eyes full of a furious passion.

The receptionist recuperated quickly and regained her composure. "What's your name, ma'am?" she asked, albeit timidly. She refused to look Maddie in the eyes, strictly watching her computer, but she kept a mask of calm.

"It's okay, Anne," a voice said from one of the hallways behind the counter. Dr. Rosenburg stepped into view as cool as a cucumber. His face was expressionless, which caused Maddie's heart to race even faster. There was a reason he was being so emotionless, she knew it. Something was dreadfully wrong with her baby boy.

"Why don't you follow me into my office, Mrs. Fenton?" the doctor asked, kindness lacing his voice. Maddie obeyed, her own face stoic. She didn't want anyone to see how much this was tearing her up.

"Please, have a seat," Dr. Rosenburg said as they entered the quaint little office. As much as she didn't want to, Maddie slowly sat down in one of the two chairs on the opposite side of Dr. Rosenburg's desk. The chairs, she decided, were clearly meant for looks and not comfort. Not that she minded. She wasn't looking to get comfortable.

Dr. Rosenburg pulled a file out of one of his desk drawers and searched for something on his computer. Maddie tapped her foot impatiently. As time ticked on, her worry only grew. Why weren't they telling her what was going on?

Finally, the doctor spoke again. "Your son woke up again this morning, Mrs. Fenton. Not even a half hour ago, in fact."

Maddie knew that she should be relieved, but she could feel the implied "but" in the doctor's voice. This was no time for celebrating.

"He actually gave us a bit of a scare when he woke up this morning," the doctor said casually, flipping through the file on his desk. "His heart rate flatlined for about a minute. Thankfully, it looks like he just pulled the monitor off when he woke up."

Maddie was an intelligent woman. She was not named valedictorian of both her graduating high school and college classes for nothing. The doctor did not call her down all this way to make small talk about what her son did or did not do. While she was pleased to hear her son was awake and that his heart hadn't actually stopped, she worried for what the doctor had to say next.

Dr. Rosenburg closed the file and folded his hands under his chin, looking Maddie in the eyes. "Tell me, Mrs. Fenton, I know we've been over this multiple times, but is there anything more you can tell me about your son's accident? Anything… unique?"

Maddie frowned. This conversation was continuing in a direction she did not like. "Unfortunately, there's not much else I can tell you, doctor," she began slowly. "Our daughter was the one who initially found Danny in the lab; Jack and I were out at the grocery store." How could she forget? Jazz had sounded frantic on the phone when she told her she was on an ambulance on the way to the hospital. Just the memory of her daughter's panicked voice and the shattering news that Danny was borderline dead sent chills down her spine and made her stomach turn.

"All we know about the accident is what Jazz told us she saw," Maddie continued. Her voice was cracking, and she hated herself for it. "She found Danny on the floor of our basement lab, she told us, and he wasn't… he wasn't breathing. His heart wasn't beating, she said. So she called 911 and Danny ended up here."

The doctor's eyebrows furrowed. "Why was your son in your lab in the first place?"

"Trust me, doctor, if I knew, I would tell you. My theory is still the same: he was interested in the ghost portal we had unveiled to him a few days before. And that's the thing, doctor. Before Danny ended up in the hospital, the portal was inactive. When Jack and I tried to turn it on initially, it didn't work. Jazz told us, though, that when she got home and found Danny, the portal was on, most likely fully active."

"Are you saying Danny turned on this portal?"

Maddie hesitated. "I don't want to make assumptions. I don't think Danny would have been able to figure out how to get it to turn on, especially since Jack and I couldn't figure it out. I'd like to think there was some sort of charge up waiting period, so to speak, and Danny just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. If it did turn on while he was down there, I would say there's a fairly good chance that the portal was highly volatile at the time and the initial start up may have… extended past the boundaries of the actual portal. Once again, though, I'd rather not make assumptions about what did or did not happen. Frankly, Danny is the only one who can answer these questions for you."

"I see," Dr. Rosenburg said slowly, reopening the file and glancing back down at it. Maddie suspected he was just looking for something to do with his hands. "Was there anything about the portal that could cause someone to have any… side effects, shall we say?"

"Dr. Rosenburg, our ghost portal is an extremely complex piece of technology that uses many different items most people would deem unconventional. The combination of any one of those items, let alone all of them… well, I can't even begin to fathom what issues there might be. Are you telling me that Danny has been affected in some way?"

It was the doctor's turn to hesitate. "As you put it yourself, we don't like to make assumptions, either. And you are correct: Danny really is the only person who can give us concrete answers to these questions. However, some of the physical signs he's exhibiting are rather concerning to us, and we're trying to get to the bottom of it."

Maddie felt her nails digging into her palm through the tough hazmat gloves of her traditional jumpsuit. "What has happened to my son?" she all but growled.

"After the scare with the heart monitor, Danny's nurse noted some odd readouts on his vitals. He came and got me, and frankly when I saw them myself, I was stunned. I've never seen numbers like those in my career." At this point, the doctor was stalling for time.

"Now, Mrs. Fenton, please don't panic when I tell you this, but Danny's vitals were much lower than they should've been. As far as we know, they still are. His heart is only beating about 32 times a minute; he only seems to be breathing about once every minute and a half. We took his temperature and it was only about 31 degrees Celsius, which, frankly, is beyond hypothermic."

Maddie was frozen in her seat. Her baby boy, in such terrible condition? Throughout all this mess, he'd never been this unstable, except for the first few days when he'd initially checked in. Otherwise, Danny had remained well within the normal ranges of the vitals the doctor had just listed off. "Is my baby okay?" she asked in no more than a whisper.

"That's the thing, Mrs. Fenton," Dr. Rosenburg said, frowning and shuffling the papers in the file awkwardly. "Danny is doing perfectly fine. He was wide awake when I got to him and seemed to be fully responsive and aware as well. One of his friends was in the room at the time, and he seemed to be understanding him and trying to communicate with him. Even though his breathing and circulation are so slow, he's still getting one hundred percent oxygen, and all brain activity seems normal, almost exceptional for a boy who just came out of a coma after being in it for so long. It's a medical anomaly, in all honesty."

Maddie was quiet for a long moment as she mulled over the boatload of information the doctor had just thrown at her. Suddenly, she felt lost, swimming in a sea of doubt and uncertainty. No mother should ever have to go through something like this, she decided.

And to think her son was in such a terrible state because of her own handiwork.

She bit her lip. "So what are you saying, Dr. Rosenburg?"

The doctor sighed and leaned back in his chair. "For lack of a better terminology, Mrs. Fenton, I'm saying your son is a dead man walking."

* * *

A memory occurred to Danny as he laid in his room, staring at the blank wall. It was the first complete memory he'd had since he'd initially woken up.

He was little, he knew that much. He wasn't exactly sure how old, but he was pretty young. He was lying on the couch in the living room, swaddled in his favorite blue blanket. The TV was on, the volume low. Danny couldn't remember the exact show, but it was bright and colorful. His head rested on his mother's lap as she stroked his hair back and away from his face.

He was sick. The stomach flu, that's what it was. His mother had resolved to stay with him all day and take care of him, that's why he was laying on her lap.

And she was singing. Danny didn't think it was very characteristic of his mother to sing, but her voice was soft and melodious to the ear. The sound comforted him and virtually stole the aches and uneasiness of his illness.

" _But come ye back when summer's in the meadow…"_

At the time, Danny didn't quite understand the word "ye" or know what a meadow was. It sounded pretty, though. And she was singing about summer, his favorite season. He got to splash in the sprinkler sometimes in the summer, and his dad would give him yummy fudge pops on the hottest days.

" _Or when the valley's hushed and white with snow…_ "

The snow was pretty fun, too, when he thought about it. He got to build snowmen with Jazz and go sledding with Tucker and Sam, and it was always fun to dig holes and build fortresses. And then when he'd come in, his nose all pink from the cold, his mom would put on a kettle of hot water and cuddle up with him on the couch, just like they were doing now.

It was snowy outside at that moment. Except Danny couldn't go out there, he was sick. Sick kids didn't go outside.

" _And I'll be here in sunshine or in shadow…_ "

"Mama," he interrupted, his small voice gravelly with sickness. "What are you singing about?"

His mother smiled down at him warmly, and a memory of the same smile from the first time he woke up flashed across Danny's mind. "It's a love song, Danny," she explained gently, never ceasing to stroke his hair. "It's saying that even after death, love between two people still exists."

Little Danny didn't quite grasp what the last part meant, but he'd been around his parents long enough to associate the word "death" with ghosts. He wasn't quite sure what a ghost was, either, but he used the term anyway, asking his mom if the song was about "ghost love."

Her smile faltered a bit. "No, Danny," she said, her voice still sweet and gentle. It had taken on an edge of seriousness, though. "Ghosts are bad creatures. They're only evil; they can't love. Do you know what evil means?"

Of course he didn't. Evil was a big word for such a small boy, especially when he was sick. He did know what "bad" meant, however, and he understood the comment on the inability to love. But why was a ghost bad?

"Promise me you won't turn into a ghost, Mama," young Danny begged. "I don't want you to stop loving me."

His mother laughed, a sound that warmed him to the bone and made him relax further into her arms. "Trust me, Danny, I have no plans on becoming a ghost. I'll promise, but only if you promise me you won't turn into a ghost, either. I don't want you to stop loving me, too, you know," she said, beaming and pinching his round, pink cheeks.

Danny giggled. "Okay, Mama! I promise!" It wasn't a promise easily broken, either, at least to little Danny. He didn't even know how someone turned into a ghost, though he wondered if this "death" thing had to do with it.

The memory began to fade away as young Danny drifted off to sleep and his mother resumed her singing. When Danny concentrated, he could hear the last strains of his mother's voice in her head, masking the sounds of the beeping machines surrounding him.

" _Oh Danny boy, oh Danny boy, I love you so…_ "

* * *

 _I feel as if it's worth mentioning that I am taking some creative liberties when it comes to some of the mechanics of hospital operations and medical conditions. I'm doing what research I can, but obviously I cannot perfectly replicate a hospital scenario. I will do my best to get things to as close to accurate as possible._

 _I also feel as if it's worth mentioning that my updates do not generally come this quickly. I happened to have more free time than normal over the weekend, and it gave me time to write and edit this chapter. I will try to get the next chapter out as quickly as possible, but it still may take a little bit longer than this time around._

 _Thank you for all of your support so far! All of your reviews, favorites, and follows are much appreciated!_


	3. Chapter 3

The last time Sam Manson saw her best friend was on February 24th.

She doesn't get to see him again until April 7th.

Her parents forbade her from visiting the hospital and seeing Danny. _Always knew that Fenton boy would wind up getting himself half-killed_ , they said. She argued that he was in a coma and sometimes having loved ones around helped coma patients heal faster, but each time she brought up the subject of Danny, her parents would quickly change the subject.

She ended up getting her information on Danny from Tucker, who visited him every Sunday morning. Tucker told her it was probably better that she didn't see him; apparently, he was hooked up to a bunch of machines and monitors in the ICU, and it was kind of unnerving seeing him lie there, dead to the world.

 _You want a nice memory of Danny_ , Tucker had told her on the third Sunday. He'd met her at the newest vegetarian diner in town per her request despite the fact that he was a strict carnivore. She remembered picking at a sad-looking apple pecan salad (nobody ever said it was a good diner) as Tucker gave her the latest update. His face was sullen and his eyes cloudy when he spoke.

He told her the doctors were starting to doubt whether or not he would wake up. Long-term comas, despite what daytime soap operas might portray, weren't too common, and each day that passed caused a decrease in the likelihood that Danny would make it out okay. Tucker said having the good memories of him, not images of him in a hospital bed, was the best for her at that point.

 _Just in case something happens to him_ , he'd said.

Sam never gave up hope though. She didn't care what Tucker or anyone else told her: she was going to see Danny in the hospital. She tried day after day to convince her parents to allow her to go, but they refused each time. As time passed, they got firmer in their refusals, but something changed inside of them. Sam could see it in their eyes. They were actually starting to feel more sympathetic for her, starting to sound a bit like Tucker when they told her Danny wouldn't want her to see him like that.

On March 29th, she felt a shift in the atmosphere. She couldn't quite describe it; it unsettled her stomach and caused a bout of paranoia to start nagging at the back of her head, but she couldn't place what was causing her to feel that way. Sitting in her English class on that day, she absentmindedly wondered if it had to do with Danny.

She and Tucker met up for lunch again the next Sunday, April 2nd. For the first time since Danny had entered the hospital, he came entered the restaurant with a set jaw and firm eyes. He sat down and looked Sam in the eye, and she almost felt small under the steely look he wore. He opened his mouth and spoke only two words.

 _Danny's awake._

He proceeded to describe the events of that morning - Danny waking up, the catastrophe with the heart rate monitor, being abruptly ushered out of Danny's room on account of the need for an examination - and Sam listened intently. She stayed quiet as he told her that something was wrong with Danny's vitals; head overheard the nurse talking with the doctor as he left.

"But he seemed okay," Tucker said. His eyes never left hers the entire time he related his story. "He and I even had a conversation… sort of. It was more of a one sided conversation, but he still responded, and he seemed to be functioning okay."

She asked him why he looked so serious if Danny was finally awake and responsive.

He gave her a fixed look. "Because I know you, Sam," he told her. "You're gonna try to get into that hospital to see Danny, I know it. And I'm telling you that it's not a good idea. They told me on the way out that right now, he's extremely fragile. Not just because of his physical status, but his mental status, too. Get this: apparently he woke up for a little bit last Wednesday, right? Well when they tried to take him in for an MRI, he completely lost it, and no one knows why. They said now that he's awake, people have to be really careful around him. They don't want to set him off again. Besides, you wouldn't be able to do anything there anyway. He can't even talk to you right now."

Sam had a thousand retorts and arguments on the tip of her tongue, but she resisted. As much as she hated to admit it, her friend may have actually had a point. She didn't want to end up being the cause of Danny getting hurt even further, mentally or physically. She wanted to see him so badly, but she knew she had to bide her time in order to be rewarded.

By that Friday, April 7th, she's done biding her time.

That morning, Sam sets off in the direction of Tucker's house to meet up with him and walk the rest of the way to the school. Instead of turning left two blocks later, however, she turns right, towards the direction of Amity Park General Hospital. As she walks, she pulls out her phone and texts Tucker, telling him that she is sick and asking him to get her homework for her. She then proceeds to call the school and impersonate one of her house maids, calling on the behalf of Mrs. Manson and informing the secretary that Sam will not be in attendance that day.

It takes her forty long minutes to walk down to the hospital, during which the last ten or fifteen minutes it pours down rain on her. It is quite a spectacle, then, when a soggy teenage girl enters the doors to the lobby and demands to know where the ICU was.

It takes Sam fourteen longer minutes to finally get in the ICU and to Danny's room. Far too long in her opinion. She considers playing the name game, dropping the name "Manson" and giving the staff a pointed look. They'd listen to her then, treat her like a princess.

But she doesn't play dirty. Not like that, anyway, using her name like that.

Danny's nurse, a sweet woman who introduced herself as Linda, leaves Sam alone at the door to his room. It is open, but she can't see him. He is probably behind the wall.

She starts to step forward but hesitates. What if Tucker was right? What if it really is a bad idea for her to be here? What if she makes Danny worse in his already unstable state? What if she sees something she didn't want to see?

She sets her jaw. No. Sam Manson never backs down when she wants to do something and she wasn't about to start now.

She enters Danny's room.

When she lays eyes on him for the first time in a month and a half, she is confused. From the way Tucker described, Danny was practically full-on cyborg with how many machines he was connected to. However, Danny simply seems to be laying there serenely, blanket covering his body, head resting on pillow. As she looks closer, however, she begins to notice other things. For instance, Danny's head is secured in place by a neck brace. Small tubes and wires trail out from under the blanket, spilling over the railing of the bed. Different machines on wheels surround Danny's bed, some flashing lights, some beeping mildly. In the middle of it all is Danny himself, sleeping of all things.

Sam steps forward silently, towards the railing of Danny's bed. She doesn't want to wake him, but does he really have to be sleeping? Hadn't he been sleeping for so long already?

She was carefully reaching a hand toward him when his eyes snap open.

She pulls her hand back immediately. She hadn't meant to wake him. His eyes remain open wide for a split second until they pan over to her. Instantly, his entire face relaxes, and a grin slowly spreads across it.

"Sam," he whispers in a voice so cracked and craggy it makes her flinch visibly.

"Danny," she says, reaching down to put a hand on his shoulder. He reaches up with his own right hand, taking it out from under the blanket. Sam's mood darkens slightly when she sees the IV tube and heart rate monitor wire trailing from it. When he covers her hand with his own, she is surprised at how cold it felt against her skin. A slight tingle dances across the back of her hand and through her fingers, and she shudders involuntarily as a chill passes through her spine. Despite this, she doesn't move her hand.

"You sound awful, Danny," she says, trying to smile back at him. It's stupid; she probably looks like she's giving him a pity smile.

He still keeps his same goofy grin. "Yeah, I know," he says. She hates hearing his voice like that. It makes it all too real. "I mean it could be due to the fact that I had a tube shoved down my throat for six weeks, but it's probably just my morning voice."

Sam is startled. "You had a ventilator?" Her voice is no more than a whisper.

He laughs, an odd sort of exhaling sound that cracked as badly as his voice. "Yeah. Whatever happened, apparently my body decided to take a day off. Or a few weeks. Either way, they took it out like… two days ago? Three? I don't know, I think I'm still adjusting to telling time. Don't worry about it, though. It's no biggie."

Sam frowns. "No biggie?" she repeats, her voice dangerously low. "Danny, you were dead to the world for _six weeks_. Heck, Tucker told me you actually _were_ dead for a while there! One day you're completely fine and the next the school counselor's calling me into her office and telling me you've been in a bad accident and that you might not even make it out _alive_. You've been hooked up to all this stuff for a month and a half just to keep you kicking, and Tucker and I have been worried _sick_ about whether we're going to be able to see our best friend again, and you're going to lay there and tell me it's 'no biggie'?" Her voice raises in volume and in pitch. "Nobody even knows what happened to you, Danny! All people know is that you end up lying _dead_ somewhere and you end up in a coma!"

The smile has disappeared from Danny's face, and Sam immediately starts to regret her outburst. This is not how she wanted this first meeting to go. But how can he sit there and joke about it when everyone had been worried about him for so long?

"You don't think I don't know?" Danny rasps. "People keep asking me over and over again. The doctors, my family… My sister was crying when she told her side of the story. She told me she found me on the floor of the lab and she was terrified out of her mind. She wants to know more than anyone what happened to me, and I can't tell her. I can't tell anyone, Sam."

"Danny, why on earth not? What's stopping you?"

He looks at her, his blue eyes wide and sad. They seem to peer into her very soul, and she almost wants to hide from their gaze. "I can't remember, Sam. Something terrible happened to me, and I can't remember a single thing about it. I don't even know why I was in the lab in the first place. All anybody can guess is that it has something to do with my parent's portal."

Sam furrows her eyebrows. "That thing your parents were working on for so long? I thought it didn't work."

Danny shrugs, and the movement is small and stiff and awkward, mostly thanks to the neck brace. "Well, apparently when Jazz found me, the portal was on, but before I went down to the lab, it wasn't. My mom told me she thinks the thing started up spontaneously after it got all charged up. At least I think so. She was using a lot of technical terms when she explained."

Sam's mind is racing at a hundred miles per hour. "But if it only happened to turn on while you were down there, how did it hurt you so badly? It's not like you were in the thing, right?"

He shrugs again. "I don't know. I honestly don't. I guess I really could have been at this point. All I've got is this to show for it."

He lifts his left arm out from underneath the blanket, and Sam's hand flies to her mouth when she sees it.

Darkened branches spread down Danny's arm, splayed out in complete contrast against his pale skin. The patterns are gorgeously intertwined and spiraling in a cascade all the way down to the palm of his hand and up and past the edge of his sleeve. There is a deadly grace to the lightning on his arm, and Sam wonders how something so beautiful can be so terrible at the same time.

She also wonders how markings like those can be so sickeningly _green_.

Danny seems to notice that she can't tear her eyes away from the elegantly ugly scar decorating him. "I guess it's a Lichtenberg figure. The kind of thing you get from a lightning strike?"

Sam can barely speak, her shock is so intense. "God, Danny, a lightning strike?" she asks weakly.

Danny doesn't meet her eyes. "I didn't actually get hit by lightning, y'know," he mutters. "I guess when the portal turned on, I was touching something metal and a spark jumped onto it. Must've knocked me out."

Sam shakes her head. "No, Danny. A stray spark doesn't cause something like that thing on your arm. A stray spark doesn't half kill you and leave you cold on the floor. A stray spark doesn't put you in a coma for six freaking weeks."

Danny sighs. "I don't know what to tell you, then, Sam. I'm trying to remember what actually happened, I honestly am. But I think there's a part of me that doesn't actually want to remember. Whatever happened to me, it wasn't pleasant. It's almost better to be blissfully unaware."

Sam considers this. She (and the rest of the world, for that matter) is dying to know what forced Danny into his lifeless sleep. She can see that Danny is desperate for answers himself. But can she really ask him to try and relive something so traumatic just so everyone can get answers?

 _But the answers might help us help him faster._

Danny laughs again, and the sound scratches at his throat. "I wouldn't worry about it, Sam. This little thing is nothing compared to the other weird stuff."

Sam snaps to attention, and she knows Danny regrets his his words as soon as they leave his mouth. "What other weird stuff?" she demands.

Danny cringes. "I-I, uh… well," he stammers, flinching under Sam's strong glare. "I really don't think it's anything too major. It's just my vitals, I guess. They're, um, a little screwy."

"Screwy how?"

Sam knows she's won when his defense deflates. "My heart rate is pretty low, for one thing," he begins slowly. "It's only about half of what it should be, apparently. So my blood pressure is awfully low, too. And I'm not breathing as often as I should. Like once every… two minutes, I think? My temperature is hovering right around 88 degrees, too."

Sam feels slightly weak in the knees. The information is hitting her like a battering ram, and she wants to sit and take it all in. Those kind of vitals are unheard of in the medical world, as far as she knows. "Danny, you…" The words can't form themselves; they're getting choked up in her throat. "That's… you shouldn't even be…"

"Alive?" Danny finishes in a very matter-of-fact tone. "Yeah, Sam. I know. I overheard my mom and the doctor talking a few days ago. Talking about it pretty loudly, too, for some reason."

"How are you even sitting there and talking to me right now?"

Danny heaves an arm up in the air. "I don't know, Sam." He sounds exasperated, and she wonders how many times he's said that he doesn't know something since he woke up. "First it's my vitals, then stuff keeps falling out of me? Strange stuff keeps happening to me and I can't explain it to anyone because I don't know how or why it's happening."

Sam doesn't really hear what he says after he mentions that stuff keeps "falling out" of him. At this point, she doesn't think she even wants to ask, but against her better interests, she does.

Danny watches her for a moment before answering. "When I first woke up," he explains, "my heart rate monitor fell off my finger. All the doctors and nurse thought I woke up and took it off myself, but I know for a fact that I didn't. I wouldn't even have had time to take it off; the alarm went off practically the moment I woke up."

"Maybe it just slipped off your finger?" Sam suggests, but she knows her argument is weak. The heart rate monitors they use at the hospital are designed to stay on tight, even if the patient is moving around.

Danny shakes his head as best as he can, but he winces as he moves. That neck brace seems to be doing him more discomfort than it is good. "Nah. Tucker told you about my panic attack, right? This thing didn't fall off that entire time, and I was thrashing around like a maniac." He raises the hand with the heart monitor and shakes it for effect. "And that's not the only thing that's fallen mysteriously. My IV has popped itself out twice in the past few days. _Twice_. The nurse was talking about how she's never seen such a loose IV, or something."

It's Sam's turn to shake her head. "Danny, this is just too much. What are you trying to tell me?"

"At the risk of repeating myself, I don't know. Just that something big happened to me, and now something's changed. Things are different now."

The comment piques Sam's interest. "How do you mean?"

Danny frowns. "I can feel it. I can just tell things aren't the same as they were a month and a half ago. But what do I know? Maybe it's just the feeling of me coming out of a freaking coma."

Sam ponders this. As strange as what Danny is telling her, there is a truth to what he's saying. Something truly has changed in the world, she thinks, and she can feel it, too. It's an indescribable feeling, as if it is on the tip of her tongue. She can hear the voice in the back of her head screaming at her, telling her exactly what is going on, but it only comes across as white noise.

"Excuse me, miss?"

Both Danny and Sam turn to the door where Linda the nurse is standing with arms crossed. Her lips are pursed in disappointment, and Sam's heart sinks to the bottom of her stomach. Poor Danny is confused, looking back and forth between the two girls.

"I think you need to come with me," Linda says to Sam. Slowly, she obliges, slinking out of the room and leaving her friend behind. She pales when she sees who is waiting for her outside Danny's room.

"Thank you, ma'am," Mrs. Manson says curtly. "I believe Officer Higgins and I can handle the situation from here." She nods to the tall, uniformed man beside her.

Sam wonders how long it will be before she's allowed to see Danny now.

* * *

After Sam's untimely departure, Danny does not have another visitor until the next morning. The visitor, however, is someone he is surprised to see.

"Um, hello?" Danny says as the boy plops down into one of the two chairs by the window.

"Danny," he replies, nodding once. "You're finally awake."

Danny notes how much of a struggle it is to look at someone who's completely to the side of his vision when his head is still fastened into the neck brace. "Yeah, I, uh, I guess I am."

Olive green eyes scan the floor. "You were out of school for a really long time."

Danny sighs. "Well, being in a coma will do that to you, y'know. I'm not looking forward to what Lancer has to say to me when I do get back."

The boy cracks a small smile. "I hear you, Fenton. Lancer can be a beast."

Danny rolls his eyes, but he's smiling, too. "Yeah, but you're on the football team. Lancer loves you guys on the football team."

The boy scoffs. "Yeah, well, unlike Dash, I don't wanna rely on Lancer to get me through school. I wanna get to college on my own. Make my parents proud."

Danny is surprised by the sudden candor. It seems uncharacteristic of the boy, but does Danny really know him all that well? "So, uh," he begins, unsure of where the conversation is headed. "What are you doing here, man? I think it's Saturday, right? Why aren't you with Dash and the rest of the football cronies?"

Kwan Li sighs and leans forward,putting his head in his hands. "This, uh, isn't the first time I've been here, Fenton. Danny."

"What do you mean?"

"I mean I've been coming here for the past month. Like once or twice a week. I've… talked to you. 'Cause I mean, uh, you were a… good listener. It was therapeutic, I guess." Kwan doesn't meet Danny's soul-piercing gaze.

Danny is quiet for a long moment. "Why would you need someone to talk to, Kwan? Something going on?"

Kwan's cheeks flush red. "My parents, they uh… they told me I'm… that I'm adopted. Like a week after you got into this joint. And I, uh, didn't… take it well. It was easy to come here and, uh, talk to you, 'cause I could rant and you didn't… judge me, I guess."

Danny mulls over this information. "There's nothing wrong with being adopted, Kwan. My cousin is adopted. He's weird - although what do you expect when he's from the back country of Arkansas? - but he's alright. His parents really love him. And I'm sure yours do, too. If they adopted you, doesn't that mean they actually really wanted you?"

Kwan giggles a bit, a strange sound coming from the varsity football team's best linebacker. "Yeah, you're right. They do love me. I guess when I first found out, I was just taken off guard. Felt like Elmerton's team just knocked into me at full speed. But I'm not as mad anymore." He looks up, and suddenly snaps up in his seat. "Um, Fe- Danny?"

"What?" Danny is taken aback by Kwan's sudden change, and he becomes even more confused when Kwan seems to grow taller before his very eyes.

" _You're sinking into the bed!_ "

Danny's eyes flicker down to the bed, and sure enough, his legs are halfway embedded into the mattress. Even stranger is that they don't seem to be solid any longer; they are a fine, blue aura, their outline fuzzy and not quite there. As if they exist on a different plane and Danny can only barely see into the plane.

He quickly gets over his initial shock as he realizes he is continuing to sink into the bed. Soon enough, he'll be stuck _inside_ of it. "H-help me!" he manages to sputter out, and Kwan leaps into action. He grabs Danny's still solid arm - ironically, the arm with his IV and heart rate monitor - and lifts with the kind of strength only an adrenaline-driven jock can provide.

Kwan, by some miracle, manages to pull Danny's mostly misty body out of the bed, and the aura becomes flesh and bone once more. Startled by the sudden added weight, Kwan drops Danny, and he falls back onto the bed with a _fwump_. Danny hisses from pain, but it only lasts for a moment.

Kwan stumbles back and away from the bed. "Wh-what in the _hell_ was that, Fenton?" he demands, the pitch of his voice noticeably raised.

Danny, having recovered from his quick bout of pain, stutters back, "I-I don't know! That's never happened to me before!"

Kwan's fingers are buried in his short, dark hair. "So that's not normal?" he squeaks.

Danny shoots him a look of indignation. "No, Kwan," he says, sarcasm dripping from every word, "ICU patients fall through their beds daily! Today just happens to be my day!" He rolls his eyes. "What do you think, Mr. I Actually Do My Homework?"

Kwan paces back and forth for a moment, the scene replaying in his head. The way Danny had just started falling _through_ the bed, and the way the temperature dropped like a stone, and the way his skin had crawled when he grabbed Danny's arm…

And he could've sworn Danny's eyes flashed a bright, electric green during the whole ordeal.

"I-I'm gonna go get a doctor," he says shakily, running out of the room. He is so engrossed in the memories of what happened that he doesn't notice the well-dressed man until it is too late and they have collided.

Kwan immediately reaches a hand out towards the man. "Sir! I-I am so sorry! I just, uh, I need to -"

Interrupting him, the man laughs quietly as he smooths down his scarlet tie, and the sound causes Kwan to freeze. There's an underlying danger in the man's laugh, but it isn't prominent enough for Kwan to truly notice.

"Relax, child," he says, his voice reminiscent of a cat's silky purr. "I understand you are worried about your friend, hm? Being in the ICU is no walk in the park, I'm afraid."

Warning bells are ringing like crazy in Kwan's head, and he tries to focus on the task at hand. Danny. Danny needs help. "Yessir, Mr… um…"

The man laughs again. "I'm sure there is nothing to worry about, dear boy," he says amicably, and Kwan can't help but notice how he evaded the implied question of his name. "Why don't we take a walk, Mr. Li?"

"How do you know my name?" Kwan asks, but the man doesn't respond. Instead, he wraps an arm around Kwan's shoulder and steers him in the opposite direction, away from the nurse's station and away from help for Danny.

Kwan is overcome by terror at this point. First, it was Danny, sinking into the bed like the bed was quicksand and Danny didn't exist. Now it was this strange, threatening man in an expensive suit and silvery hair, a man who knew Kwan's name but would not tell the boy his own name. Kwan couldn't help but feel like a cow being led to slaughter. And who knew what was happening to poor Danny at this point?

"Um, Mr., uh, sir, that is," he stammers, "I really should be getting back to Danny. Something, uh, weird has happened, and he needs a doctor, like, now."

The man nods thoughtfully. "Yes, young Danny, hm?" he muses, mostly to himself. Then, to Kwan, "I'm sure your friend will be just fine, my boy."

Kwan shakes his head fervently. "No, sir, you don't understand. It's really serious."

"Why don't you tell me, then? Help me to understand what it is that has you so worried."

Kwan hesitates. Why should he tell this man anything? There is something about him that makes Kwan's hair stand on end and goosebumps ripple down his arms. His internal alarm system is still screaming at him to get out of the man's custody and back to Danny. This guy can't be good news.

And yet a small voice of reason pipes up in the back of Kwan's mind. Maybe if he cooperates, he can get back to Danny quicker. This man didn't seem like the kind of person one would want to try and run away from, anyway.

So Kwan spills the story, telling the man about the situation in as much detail as he could. He even tells him how sure he was that Danny's eyes had been green. All the while, the man listens carefully, nodding and stroking his goatee.

When Kwan finishes with his story, the man says, "Well, Mr. Li, that certainly was an interesting tale. Seems like your friend might have some sort of affliction, no? However, you'll be pleased to hear that I may be of assistance."

"With all due respect, sir, how can you help Danny? That… that was not normal! I've never seen it before in my life!"

The man smiles widely, flashing perfectly white teeth. "Well, I've been around much longer than you, haven't I, Mr. Li? Come, follow me in here."

The man opens a door with a flourish and steps inside. The interior is dark, and Kwan frowns. Everything about this seems wrong, so so wrong. Still, he lets curiosity get the best of him, and he follows after the man. The door somehow slams closed behind him.

Kwan fumbles for a light switch so he can see where the doorknob is. As he pats the walls in an earnest search, he feels a small breeze, and then the temperature of the room plummets. Before he knows it, his teeth are chattering and his goosebumps are more prominent than ever. "Sir?" he asks, quietly and cautiously. Finally, his fingers stumble over a switch and he flicks it on. He turns away from the door toward the inside of the room, but he immediately presses his back flush against the door and finds himself struggling for breath and for words.

Standing directly under the one exposed light bulb in the cleaning closet he was led into is not the man who brought him here, but someone entirely different. This… creature has jet black hair styled up into two razor-sharp points and a clammy blue skin tone that makes him look like a dead man risen. His teeth are glistening in the dim light and sharpened into pointed fangs, much like a vampires. However, Kwan cannot tear his eyes away from the thing's eyes, which are an endless, pupil-less blood red that seems to expose Kwan's very being.

"Wh-who are you?" he asks in little more than a quivering whisper. He is quite literally shaking at this point and regretting every decision that led him here.

"I'm afraid that is of no concern to you, Mr. Li," the creature purrs dangerously. His voice sounds eerily similar to the strange man's, making the experience all the more frightening. "After all, you have seen too much already. You were prepared to open up about young Danny's precious secret to the rest of the world. We cannot let that happen now, hm?"

Kwan is speechless and scared beyond belief. He cannot process a single sentence uttered by the thing standing - no, was it _bobbing in midair?_ \- in front of him.

It reaches for something in one of the pockets attached to his belt. "Ah, well, it really is no big matter," it says nonchalantly. He pulls out a silver object shaped much like a gun, and Kwan's heart rate jumps by about twenty beats. "I'm thinking… six weeks, shall we say?"

Kwan doesn't even have time to scream as a magenta light flashes across his eyes, his memory goes blank, and he slips deeper into a world of darkness.


	4. Chapter 4

A rat scuttles across Danny's chest.

He watches it with mild interest. It's got the same basic shape as a rat - beady black eyes, pear-shaped body, long naked tail - but it's different somehow. For one thing, it's see-through; its color is something of a translucent bright green that makes him wonder if he could reach right through it. It almost seems to be glowing, blurring its outline and giving it an ethereal appearance. It leaves a trail of green aura in its wake.

He supposes he should be more fazed than he is right now. But why should he be? This is easily the fifteenth animal to come and invade his room since he woke up one week ago. They never stay long - usually about two minutes or less. They would give him a long, piercing look, and he would stare right back, and just as he'd be about to say something, they would flutter or slither or scamper away.

 _Am I supposed to say something?_

He vaguely wonders if they're just hallucinations. They all have the same otherworldly appearance - green and empty and dead - and nobody else seems to pay any mind to them. A pigeon landed on the nurse's head on Thursday and pecked her head before squawking at him and flying off. The nurse never reacted.

He then considers the fact that he shouldn't be hallucinating.

Something about it doesn't seem very out of place, however. It feels quite normal, as if the strange animals were there all along and he just hadn't noticed until now. It certainly feels more normal than the world around him.

The only way he can describe the turmoil in his environment is that the universe is fighting over itself and he seems to be caught right in the middle. To him, it sounds stupid the moment he thinks it, but the new force inside of him - the pit of ice sitting right under his sternum - tells him it may not be as far-fetched as it sounds.

And so he entertains the thoughts coming from this newly awakened side of himself. He listens as it whispers into his head; he doesn't get words from it, rather, he gets feelings and concepts. Instincts, possibly. It murmurs softly, and he can feel the cold well up inside of him as he listens to a part of him that is himself, yet not quite.

It tells him that he was a catalyst, somehow. It is the only explanation for why the world had seemed to change so drastically while he was asleep. It tells him that a new force has been woken in tandem with his own awakening. This new force does not meld well with the preexisting heartbeat of the universe, and he can feel it. They are at war with each other, shifting the balance of nature itself. It tells him that he must get out of the hospital, that he must end the battle between worlds.

 _How am I supposed to end a battle of the universe when I can't end the battle of myself?_

And it's true. There is a war raging on inside himself, and the worst part is that he cannot figure out what is happening. It's as if the fiery ball of ice nestled above his stomach is fighting for dominance of his whole body, and the warmth that is the rest of him - _and seems so foreign_ \- is pushing back.

The worst part is that he has little to no control over it. If he could have his way, he'd push the cold out entirely and just be rid of it. Unfortunately at this rate, it seems as if it's there to stay. Even scarier is the fact that it seems to be gaining its ground a little more, and it is beginning to fight harder than ever.

It gets excited when one of the animals stops by. He can feel it jump in his chest and almost vibrate with energy, just begging to expand out. With what little control he has, he represses it. He doesn't know why he does it.

No. That's a lie.

 _I'm scared what will happen if I let it have control_.

This is why he's spoken to no one about this. He doesn't want to let on to anyone that he's frightened, or that anything unusual has been going on. It would probably only get him stuck in this stupid hospital for longer. He didn't even intend to tell Sam that strange things were happening, and he is surprised that he was even to keep certain things from her.

Like the fact that the conversation he overheard between his mother and his doctor was held three hallways and two rooms away.

Like the fact that there's a cold pit in his gut that almost seems to have a mind of its own, telling him frightening things about the world.

Like the fact that he's not even sure he should be as functional as he is. He thinks…

He doesn't even want to think it.

But he does.

 _I should be dead_.

And as quickly as the thought crosses his mind, he pushes it away. Existential crises are not what he needs right now, especially when he's trying not to have another episode like he did before. And besides, thinking about your own death isn't necessarily a pleasant activity.

Yet as much as the thought makes him squirm, that cold pit - _he wants it gone so bad_ \- eggs him on. It tells him, once again, that his idea may have some validity to it. It all traces back to the accident, it tells him. If he can remember the accident, he can get his answers.

As hard as he tries, he can't remember. Day in and day out, people come and ask him: doctors, friends, psychiatrists, family. Day in and day out, he tells them all the same thing: he can't remember. His only memories are the terrifying flashes he got when he woke up for the first time. They aren't much to go on, and they're so disturbing he doesn't think on them much. And he asks himself a question he asked himself before, when he first awoke.

 _Do you even want to remember?_

Maybe the universe doesn't want him to remember. If it cares so much about him, like his little cold friend keeps telling him, then maybe it cares about what he does and doesn't remember.

The rat is still there. It sits on his bicep, peering at him with soulless black eyes. The familiar sensation of the cold rising up arrives, and he instinctively pushes it back down. Once again, he feels inclined to say something, but he can't find the words to speak. It's the same song and dance, just a different day and a different animal.

The rat tilts its head a little and squints, as if to say _really?_ It turns and leaps off the bed, flying through the wall in its descent. He doesn't even blink.

He can do that, too. Go through things, that is. He'd denied it up until now but yesterday's incident with Kwan only sealed the deal. The suspicions had been there ever since he woke up and got scolded for removing his heart rate monitor, but he'd never acknowledged that it was a matter of him going through things, not the other way around.

 _Phasing. That's what Mom and Dad call it_.

Except that was a term that they used in the context of ghosts. If there is one thing he knows for certain in this new, perplexing world, it's that he isn't a ghost.

Besides, ghosts didn't exist.

Danny's thoughts are interrupted by a sharp pang in his gut and, subsequently, a knock at his door.

He doesn't know exactly what it is, but something is wrong. The cold pit is protesting violently, begging Danny to let it take charge. It tells him that something - some _one_ \- is invading his territory.

"I don't have any territory!" Danny hisses. He is so concerned by the sudden change that he doesn't realize he spoke the words aloud.

"You don't have any what?" purrs a voice from the doorway. Out of the shadows emerges a sharply dressed man, and the alarms going off in Danny's mind jump up in severity and volume. There is something about this man that is more than just off-putting. A new cold has descended over the room, tinged with a tangy electricity Danny can almost taste. The atmosphere almost seems to be engulfing him, trying to suffocate him.

The man seems to notice Danny's discomfort. "Now, don't be worried, my boy," he says, raising his hands in a gesture of peace. He takes a step forward, and Danny flinches as the invasive cold advances simultaneously. "My name is Vlad. I'm not here to hurt you, I only want to help."  
"Help me?" Danny asks accusingly. He can't help his tone. This new energy or whatever has put him on edge, and he can't seem to calm himself. Combined with the fact that he's struggling to suppress the cold inside of him, he is wound up and ready to pounce despite being bedridden.

"Yes, son," the man says. He keeps his palms in plain sight, and Danny watches them warily. Because of this, he doesn't notice the almost hungry look in his eyes.

"I might be able to help you," he is saying. "I have heard of your story, of the struggles you're facing. Believe me when I say that I empathize with your situation and I want to help in anyway I can. I may even be able to aid you in determining exactly what occurred to put you in this position."

The last statement catches Danny's attention. He doesn't know exactly how this Vlad knows of his memory loss, but the chance of having another person's help in figuring out the past is enticing. Maybe this man won't demand of him that he remember, like it seems everyone else has been doing lately. Maybe the two of them could work together, piecing together what little memory he does have and slowly working out the rest.

Just then, the cold inside of him pushes sharply, and it reminds Danny of the impending danger that he cannot see. He still does not quite understand where the threat is, but he can almost feel it underlying in the tone of the man's voice and in the new environment. He's not sure if believing the man is the best choice.

"Why should I trust you?" Danny asks, looking for a genuine answer. If this guy can give a reasonable answer as to why he should trust a complete stranger, who comes barging into his hospital room bearing a menacing aura (or something of the like), then maybe he can see reason to believe at least a little bit of what is being told.

"I'm the only person in the world who can possibly understand what you're experiencing right now, my boy," Vlad says, his voice hypnotically quiet. "You've been seeing things, yes? Strange animals or insects, perhaps?"

Danny is quiet for a moment, flabbergasted. "How did you -"

"And there's something different about yourself, isn't there?" he continues, interrupting Danny. "Something odd right around here?" He gestures towards his stomach, right above his navel.

"Y-yeah, sort of," Danny stammers, although he feels as though his ball of cold is placed higher than where the man indicated. Closer to his heart, maybe.

"If you allow me to help you, Daniel, I can explain everything and more," the man says. Danny vaguely notices that somehow, without him noticing, Vlad has approached the bed and is standing right next to the railing. "All you have to do is join me, come with me." He holds out a pale hand.

Danny's chest feels as though it's about to explode. The bundle of cold is practically screaming at him now, and he can feel true fight or flight instincts beginning to kick in with Vlad so near. There is something oddly final about the man's use of the phrase "join me," and it sets of a whole new set of alarms in Danny's head. Then as clear as day, eerily similar to his panic attack the first time he woke up, a warning resounds in his mind.

 _ **Do not trust him!**_

"I-I'm sorry sir," Danny begins timidly, trying to keep his emotions in check and not show his fear or anxiety (but ultimately failing), "but I don't know if I can do that."

Vlad's face darkens a shade, and he pushes his extended arm out a little more so that his fingertips are almost brushing Danny. "Do you not hear what I am offering you, boy? This is your chance to get all of the answers you've so desperately been craving. This is your chance to get out of this hospital. This is your chance to have the world."

"I-I really don't think that's a good idea, I've still got a lot of recovering to do, and I've got f-friends and family who'll worry about me -"

Vlad is fully frowning now, his face dangerous with an unspoken threat. "Then perhaps I need to make you understand myself!" he says as he throws himself at Danny.

The next moments happen so quickly, Danny barely has any time to register what happens. He sees the man lunge toward him, and his panic dials up to a ten. As the icy air in the room begins to blow violently, shaking everything it touches, the familiar cold inside of Danny surges with what seems to be a final push. Danny, whether it is because he's too distracted by the man poised to snatch him away or because he's desperate for an escape, allows the cold to gain control, but only for a brief moment.

A moment is all that it needs.

Danny suddenly gets the feeling of his stomach dropping, like one would get on a roller coaster, and the world blurs violently. He realizes he's doing his little trick again: he is falling through his bed, away from the man.

Except he can't stop it. He continues falling, all the way through the floor and into the level below. It must be some sort of basement area; the ICU is on ground level, and maintenance machines are installed everywhere. The noise is deafening, far much more than it should be under normal circumstances.

Then again, these aren't exactly normal circumstances.

Not wanting to end up submerged underground, Danny concentrates, willing the cold to subdue and recede back into his gut. It is somewhat of a battle, the cold fighting ferociously having gotten a taste of control, but Danny ultimately wins out, solidifying just before he hits the ground. He lands on his tailbone, and he winces with the pain. He considers the fact that he probably should've prepared himself for landing better.

The first thing he notices is that the air is once again normal, or as normal as it seems it is going to get. No more chill, no more electricity - just the mustiness of an underground maintenance room. His cold pit has settled back down, calmer now than it was when he'd been in his hospital room.

The second thing he notices is that he is disconnected from his IV and his monitors. At first, he panics, thinking he might keel over at any moment, but he realizes that he feels fine. A little weak in the muscles, perhaps, especially after going for weeks without much use, but otherwise fine. Almost better than he'd felt before whatever happened to him.

Slowly, he gets to his feet, legs shaking from the effort. As relieved as he is from getting away from the dangerous man, he wants to get further away. Staying in the hospital isn't exactly a choice. Records could easily be broken into, and security wasn't always the best at this hospital. He'll be much safer at home.

Besides, he wasn't doing much lying around in a hospital bed all day, other than racking up a crazy expensive bill. He could just as easily be doing that in the comforts of his own home, where his parents could keep an eye on him.

He wanders aimlessly for a bit before finding a service elevator tucked into the corner of a hallway. He tries pressing the button, but a key card slot flashes red beside it. No way in without an access pass.

Danny frowns. As alright as he is feeling, exhaustion is starting to creep back on him, threatening his collapse at any moment. He doesn't particularly feel like searching for another elevator without a key card or a set of stairs. There must be some other way inside.

Suddenly, he's struck with an idea that sounds crazy at first, but makes sense the more he thinks about it. Closing his eyes, he concentrates on the pit of cold inside of him once more.

 _Okay,_ he thinks, not quite sure if it's the sort of thing he should be talking to. _I'm kinda tired of fighting against you. Can we cooperate maybe, just this once? So we can get out of here and far away from whoever that guy was?_

The cold doesn't respond, but Danny can feel the turmoil inside of him lessening. He concentrates harder, attempting to will the cold out just enough so he can do his trick one last time. He's still too scared to see what will happen if he allows the cold to have full reign over his body, but he can work with this arrangement.

Opening his eyes, he looks down at himself. He has transformed into an aura again, airy and blue and eerie. Despite himself, he grins as he steps through the metal doors of the elevator and into the car. Once inside, with a little effort, he brings himself back into his solid body and stabs the up button with his finger. He collapses to the floor as the elevator begins its ascent to freedom.

Done cooperating, the cold has begun its rebellion again, but Danny is too relieved and excited to care. He's getting away from the creepy man and from the hospital. He's discovered that this new force that has awoken inside of him can maybe be controlled, with time and practice and patience. All in all, it is a moment where he can let out a sigh he feels as though he's been holding in for hours. And as the elevator jolts to a halt, Danny staggers to his feet once more, ready to see his room for the first time in almost two months.

* * *

Jack Fenton was diagnosed with autism at an early age. As such, he has never been the best in regards to interpersonal interactions and social cues.

This is why when his son was found a breath away from death - right next to one of his own inventions, even - Jack did not go with his wife and daughter to the ER. He did not visit his son once while he was asleep. He wasn't sure whether he should go and visit him in the hospital now that he'd woken up.

It wasn't that he didn't care about or love his son. Family was probably the most important thing in his life; he'd do anything to keep them safe and happy. He loved his Danny to death, and it shattered him when Jazz had called in a breathless furor, telling him and Maddie that Danny was in bad shape.

Knowing that it was the portal, a creation of his own hands, that had most likely been the culprit of Danny's brush with death was what conflicted Jack. After all, even though his first priority was his family, he loved his work. He didn't want to believe that something he'd helped make hurt Danny so badly. How could he make something that could harm his family?

And so the day after Danny was admitted into the hospital, Jack drowned himself in his work. He tinkered around with a few of his lesser inventions, but mostly he studied the portal. If he could just dig deep enough, if he could just find out what happened to Danny, maybe he could redeem himself.

After all, why would his son want to see him when he'd been the one to land him in the hospital?

He spent most of his time in the lab. He would get so absorbed in his work that Jazz would have to bring him a sandwich when she came home for lunch, so that he would eat, and Maddie would stumble tiredly down the steps at one in the morning and urge him to go up to bed. Some nights he didn't even sleep in his bed. He would fall asleep at one of the consoles and wake up with red imprints of keys and buttons on his cheeks.

The physical and mental stress were beginning to take a toll on him. Heavy bags were forming under his eyes and his posture sagged just a little more each day. With each day that passed with no results, he grew more and more defeated, more and more convinced that if something bad happened to Danny as a long-term side effect, it would be all his doing.

When he expressed this to Maddie, she insisted it wasn't the case. She'd had a good share in the work of building the portal - they'd each done their own calculations and construction - but Jack wouldn't hear any of it. He'd been the one to come up with the idea of making a portal to the realm of ghosts, way back in their college days. Back then, it'd ended badly, too, with his best friend also getting trapped in a hospital for far too long.

It was never supposed to happen again, not with his own flesh and blood.

And so a bright and airy Monday morning, exactly one week and one day after Danny has woken up, finds Jack in the same place as usual: staring intently at the portal, the vast void of swirling green energy reflecting in his blue eyes and casting the room in a sickly green glow. Though he can't see them, tendrils of cold are are twisting and twirling in the air, raising goosebumps on the back of his neck and sending a shiver down his spine. Overall, the portal is giving off an uneasy vibe.

 _I have to build a door for that thing_ , Jack thinks as he turns away. Maybe it'll cut off the aura that's beginning to permeate the house. He mulls over a design as he fiddles with the same controls he's been toying with every day since he began his work. Big black and yellow stripes, maybe. A warning to anyone who sees it of the dangers he's caused.

As much as he'd like to, he doesn't think he can shut it down, and Maddie agrees. It's true that the portal itself is incredibly dangerous (in grave retrospect, they should've waited until the kids were out of the house, he thinks), but according to their theories on dimensional rifts and stability as well as their calculations, shutting the portal down would be infinitely worse. One can only imagine the horrors that would come from ripping a hole in the fabric of the universe and promptly closing it without proper sealing techniques.

So it must stay on and open, painfully reminding Jack of the damage he's done every time he looks at it.

He is thumbing a lever thoughtfully, not pushing it down, but considering a new theory on how to gather data from the portal to find out what it did to Danny. Possibly something with sending a small electric current through a sampling of the filtered ectoplasm coming from it? It is as he's considering these notions that he hears the doorbell ring upstairs.

Jazz is at school. Maddie said she was going out to buy groceries with the promise she would return with a bit of fudge, his favorite comfort food. Meaning he would have to trudge up the stairs and answer the door himself.

Although his eyes are dim and he is dreary as he approaches the door, his mood swings violently upward when he opens it. "Vladdie?" he whispers very uncharacteristically, unbelieving.

A man in an expensive black suit is standing on the stoop, beaming with abnormally white teeth. Shiny silver hair is slicked back and tied neatly into a ponytail that drapes just past his shoulder blade. He has deep blue eyes that initially seem welcoming, but someone with a trained eye might be able to see the darkness that lies within. He stands with a certain dignity that makes one feel small underneath him. He is the perfect picture of charm and grace and poise, someone you might like to meet and get along with at first.

"Hello, Jack, old friend," he says in a silky smooth voice. He is smiling widely, but it is lacking in a certain warmth one would expect to see in someone meeting their "old friend."

Jack starts beaming, an expression he hadn't worn in six or seven weeks. He engulfs the man in a hug, squeezing tight. He misses the strangled sound that comes out of the man's mouth as all the air escapes his lungs, and he misses the clear grimace the man wears behind his back.

"I can't believe it's Vlad Masters in the flesh!" Jack exclaims, setting his friend back down in front of him.

The man, Vlad, busies himself brushing invisible dust off of his suit and arranging his disheveled tie. "Yes, it's me," he says, a hint of irritation lacing his voice. Jack, being himself, misses this.

Vlad regains his composure and straightens himself. "Business was taking me through the area, and I'd heard you and dear Maddie settled here. I decided a little drop-by was in order."

Jack is still grinning. "Well, come on in! My casa is su casa, or however that saying goes…"

The men settle in the living room after Jack brings out a hot kettle of tea and a few crackers. Jack leans back on the couch comfortably, and Vlad sits precariously on the edge. He looks as if he's trying not to touch more of the couch than he has to, but he keeps a mask of calm collectedness.

"So what's been new with you, V-man?" Jack asks as he pours Vlad a cup of tea.

Vlad accepts it but does not drink. "Ah, you know, business as usual," he says amicably. He sets the saucer down and reaches into the inside pocket of his jacket, pulling out a small vial with white powder in it. Carefully, he removes the cork and presses his finger to the opening, turning the whole vial upside down. When he rights it and removes his finger, some of the powder has stuck to his fingertip. Ever so carefully, he brushes it into the tea and, oddly enough, stirs it with the same finger.

Jack watches intently. "Whatcha doing there?"

"Don't mind me, Jack," Vlad says with aloof in his voice. "Just a special sugar I picked up doing business in Thailand. Very expensive. I try to reserve it for special occasions."

For the first time since his arrival, Jack gets the feeling Vlad may not be being totally straight with him.

Vlad is continuing. "I didn't come all this way to prattle on about myself, though," he says, still stirring his tea with his finger. "I want to hear about you, old friend, what you and Maddie have been up to all these years."

Jack reflects for a moment, something he does not often do. The last time he'd seen Vlad was almost twenty years ago, and the circumstances were eerily similar to the current ones. Poor Vlad had been cooped up in the hospital with that horrible ecto-acne - another result of one of his own inventions. A portal, in fact. Even back then, Jack had trouble reading people's emotions, but he could clearly see the pain on Vlad's blemished face. When he and Maddie left the hospital that day, they agreed Vlad was probably still bitter about the incident and it was better to let him be.

If Vlad had been that bitter, Jack didn't want to see how Danny felt.

It was almost surprising, this sudden visit. Vlad had never given either of the Fentons any indication that he was out of the hospital. In fact, they saw neither hide nor hair of him until Maddie pointed out a magazine sitting on the rack about eight years later. There he was, the man himself, completely healed, flooding the cover of Forbes magazine.

Jack remembers being hurt. True, maybe he should've checked in with his friend more often, but he was terrible at remembering such social niceties. Was Vlad truly that angry with him that he would not speak a word to him, even after fully recovered?

And so he let the matter drop. It was much easier not to think of such things. Instead, he focused on his work; paranormal science didn't deal with such complex relationships. This was how life continued for the next ten or eleven years until today, when Vlad showed up on his front doorstep.

These thoughts pass through Jack's mind quickly. He gives himself a little jolt to shake himself out of his reverie and smiles at Vlad, albeit weaker than before. "Eh," he begins, not sure of what to say. "It's been kind of rough here for awhile. Things not going as we'd hoped, y'know?"

Instantly, Vlad dons a mask of concern, but Jack can't tell the difference. "Whatever do you mean?" he asks.

Jack hesitates again. "Um, there was this incident with our boy, Danny," he says. He feels suddenly and uncomfortably squirmish under Vlad's gaze. "Y'see, he might've gotten mixed up with one of our inventions downstairs; he's been in the hospital for awhile now…"

Vlad's hand covers his mouth. "My goodness," he breathes, audible through the cracks in his fingers. The drama he's exuding seems a bit over the top, but it is barely noticeable. "Tell me what happened."

Unable to contain himself, Jack spills the entire story. He tells Vlad of Jazz's earth-shattering call and of Maddie's rampant drive to the hospital. He tells him of the countless theories of what happened and of the countless misdiagnoses from the doctors. He tells him of how Danny awoke last week and of how he hasn't had the heart to go and face his son.

All the meanwhile, Vlad listens intently, genuinely interested in the tale. There are certain points in the story when he raises his eyebrows or tilts his chin just slightly. Most notably are the points when Jack mentions the accident had involved a portal and Maddie's recount of Danny's abnormal vital readings. He never speaks or interrupts, though, and even after Jack is finished, he stays quiet for a long moment, the gears in his head turning furiously.

"I am truly sorry to hear of this, Jack," he says after the silence, gently placing a hand on Jack's knee. "Is there anything I can do for you or Maddie?"

"Oh, no, Vladdie, don't worry about it. You've got all your stuff to worry about, we don't wanna trouble you with Fenton family issues."

"Nonsense," Vlad scoffs. "I'll tell you what: I will cover all of the hospital expenses. Surely such an extended length of time in the ICU adds up, no?"

Jack's mouth drops open again. "No, Vlad! We could never ask you to do something like that!"

Vlad gives his old friend an odd little grin. "Well, then I suppose it's a good thing you aren't asking me, hm? Besides, it's the least I can do. I can empathize with young Daniel, after all; I know what it's like to be in his position. It'll hardly make a dent in my savings." He pauses for a moment, then suddenly lights up, as if struck with an idea. "In fact, I will do you one better. One of the companies I own runs a private facility right here in Amity Park. What if we moved Daniel there? I'm sure the general hospital setting can't be too comfortable, and at my clinic, he'll receive top notch care. May I do that for you and Maddie?"

Jack is speechless. His best friend doesn't talk to him for twenty years and then suddenly shows up in Amity Park, offering to take such good care of their family? It sounds fishy to most, but to Jack, it sounds like a dream come true. His best friend finally wants to reconnect after all this time. Maybe they can finally have a relationship again, like the one they had throughout middle school, high school, and even college.

Vlad simply watches and smiles as Jack attempts to find his words. "Let me go and put a few calls in, yes? I'm sure you'll want to give your lovely wife an update." He makes to rise from the couch, but Jack grabs his hand.

"Wait," he says, blue eyes meeting blue. "At least let Maddie and I get you some lunch or something. I mean we've gotta repay you somehow."

Vlad laughs, a strange sound coming from a man such as he. "I appreciate your generosity, old friend, but I'm afraid I have to get going sooner than I thought. Lots of business to attend to and all. I will, however, make sure young Daniel is taken care of before the day is out. I'll let them know to give you a call once he's safe and sound."

Vlad is up and to the door, but he stops with his hand resting on the handle. "Ah, one thing I forgot to mention. This facility houses some patients in very fragile states, and they request that outside visitors be kept to a minimum. Contact with Daniel will be extremely limited for a period of time, but I'm sure the outcome outweighs, of course."

He sweeps the door open before Jack has the chance to process what his friend just said, and he is gone before Jack gets the chance to say something. A chill floods the room, but only for a moment. Just as quickly as it came on, it disappears.

Jack sits back on the couch, staring at the door. The chill, he thinks, is almost like a metaphor for his friend. Sweeping in and out in a flash, just like that. He doesn't spend too much time thinking about it, however. He jumps out of his seat and bustles into the lab, filled with a renewed vigor.

He has work to do before Danny comes home.

* * *

 _I realize that some of you are probably confused at this point, which is kind of a good thing, at least the way I see it :) For clarification, this is a post-accident story, for the most part, although I am thinking about delving into where the series picks up a little bit. Obviously, it is not following some of the canon in the show, but I do not consider this to be an AU, I suppose. More like I'm enhancing what has been given to me in the original series. After all, questions have been raised on my end, many of which I'm addressing in this story and I will point out as time progresses._

 _I am also incredibly sorry for the lateness of this chapter. It definitely tussled with me a lot, and I'm still not particularly pleased with it, so let me know what you think in the reviews. It may help calm my concerns :)_

 _Thanks for reading!_


	5. Chapter 5

Late on Monday night, Jueun Li opens her front door and screams.

Lying there, eyes closed and dead to the world, is her son Kwan. Other than his apparent unconsciousness, he appears unharmed.

Jueun stands slack mouthed for a moment before shaking herself out of her stupor and calling her husband. Together, they lift their son and carry him inside, setting him down on the couch.

Inside, they simply stand and stare. The TV behind them echoes through the silence, a news anchor discussing the stock market. The only other light is a lamp on the side table, which casts a golden glow on Kwan. It creates hollow shadows on his face, making him look dead and empty. It doesn't help Jueun's worries much.

Her husband, Ken, wears a mask of sobriety, but he is worrying internally as well. Kwan had been missing since Saturday morning, when he went to visit a classmate of his in the hospital. They hadn't heard hide nor hair of him since. None of his school friends had seen him either, leaving the Li couple in a frenzy. They'd called the police, but they were told nothing could be done until their son had been missing for 48 hours. In fact, it was earlier this evening that the police had officially launched an investigation. But now, here he is, safe and sound. For the most part anyway.

Ken wonders what is happening. The nagging voice in the back of his head that had suddenly appeared a couple of weeks ago is blaring like a siren in his head. Hadn't a boy Kwan's age suddenly dropped unconscious two months ago? The Fenton's son, wasn't it? And hadn't the boy been in a coma for some time now? Wasn't it who Kwan had been visiting on Saturday? He prays that the same thing hasn't happened to his son, having been around the other boy.

Adopted or not, he loves his son all the same.

His prayers are answered when Kwan suddenly stirs just the slightest bit. Jueun grabs Ken's arm and squeezes hard, but he doesn't notice the pain. He is too engrossed in Kwan's movements: the flicker of his eyelids, the tiny jerk of his hand, the heavy sigh that escapes his lips.

"Kwan?" Ken whispers, and Jueun clenches his arm harder. Kwan goes still, relaxing into the couch, but his muscles stiffen again a moment later. At this point, Jueun lets go of her husband and rushes over to her son's side, brushing black bangs off of his forehead.

"Please come back to us, sweetie," she murmurs, her lips almost brushing his ear. "We miss you so much." Ken simply stands to the side, and he decides he is a little bit paralyzed by the situation at hand.

Finally, after what seems like a lifetime, Kwan's almond-shaped eyes flutter open slowly and he groans, pressing the heel of his hand into his forehead. "Wha… wha' happen?" he asks, he speech slurred and heavy from sleep.

"It's okay, sweetheart," Jueun says, still stroking back his hair. "You're safe now. You're okay."

She and Ken move to help him sit up, but he insists on doing it himself. It takes him a moment, but he eventually situates himself so that he is sitting against the arm of the couch, legs stretched out in front of him. He takes a deep breath before looking at his parents in confusion. "What exactly happened?" he asks, his speech recovering.

Jueun and Ken exchange a quick glance. "We're not entirely sure, son," Ken begins slowly after an instantaneous, silent conversation with his wife. "You never came back home after you went to go visit your friend in the hospital."

Kwan furrows his brow. "My friend? Nobody's in the hospital, I don't think."

"What do you mean?" Jueun asks, frowning. "You've been visiting the Fenton's son in the hospital for a few weeks now. That's where you were on Saturday."

"You mean Danny Fenton?" Kwan's expression of confusion does not relent. "Since when has he been in the hospital? He was fine just yesterday."

Jueun and Ken look at each other again. "Kwan, sweetie," Jueun asks. "What were you doing yesterday?"

Kwan gives his parents a look as if they had two heads. "Yesterday was the regional basketball game, don't you remember? You guys took the team out for ice cream after our big win."

Ken kneels down in front of the couch. "Kwan, that was a month and a half ago. It's April now. Are you sure you're feeling alright?"

Kwan is silent. His face seems to have paled considerably, and he carefully considers his memory. "I don't remember March at all, if it really is April," he says, uncharacteristically quiet. "I don't know what kind of prank you guys are playing on me, but it's not funny."

Jueun chokes back a sob. She has her son back, but at what cost? What caused him to lose his memory of the last six weeks? And if he had truly lost his memory…

"Ken," she whispers, her voice cracking. "He doesn't remember that w-we…"

"I know," Ken says, his face sober. "I know."

Their son does not remember the fact that he is not their biological child.

* * *

Vlad enters the hotel room and slams the door behind him. The pictures rattle on the walls and the lamp almost clatters to the floor. Surely his neighbors have heard him, but he could not care less. He is too angry right now to care.

His fist slams into the wooden desk, breaking off the entire corner and shattering it into splinters. Magenta electricity crackles dangerously around his closed fingers, and if one looked closely enough, they might see the barest hints of scarlet red swirling into his eyes, threatening to overpower them.

He inhales deeply through his nose and blows it out of his mouth in one huff. Slowly, the energy surrounding his hand dies down and the tendrils of red in his eyes recede. The damage, however, has already been done. Little wooden shards adorn the plush red carpet, and there is a jagged chunk now missing from the desk. No doubt there will be questions if he simply leaves the mess lying around, but it isn't anything a little bit of his money can't handle.

Still, trifling matters of desks are the last things on his mind. He is too preoccupied with the latest escapade of a mere teenager who does not have a clue as to what he is doing.

"Although he must have some sort of a clue," he muses to himself, pacing back and forth. The boy had clearly been of sound enough mind and control in order to stage his escape. It had initially come as such a surprise to Vlad - and Vlad Masters was a man not often surprised - that even now, twenty minutes later, he is still taken aback by the sheer shock of it.

But how? That is the big question he keeps asking himself. "He only just woke up a week ago!" he says. He doesn't realize that he is speaking to himself in the midst of all his thinking. Memories of years ago are washing over him as he remembers how long he'd sat in the hospital, slowly mutating into something different, something horrifying. Slowly gaining control over each small thing as it came along. The boy, however, is already showing tremendous power and even a bit of control mere days after waking up.

Sighing deeply and pinching the bridge of his nose, Vlad walks over to the table at his bedside. As he walks, a ring of black light sparks into existence around his waist. This does not faze him, nor does it when the ring breaks into two, each sweeping in opposite directions from each other. They fizzle into nothingness when they pass over the soles of his shoes and the top of his head. In their wake, they leave behind a creature not of the world, the very same creature that attacked a teenage boy in a broom closet two days ago.

His black gloved hand picks up a cell phone lying on the bedside table. It is cheap and disposable, the perfect kind of phone to make business with. Less chance of leaving a messy trail. He flips the phone open and punches in a number.

As the phone rings, he drifts off of the ground entirely, hovering five inches over the carpet. He moves towards the window at the back of the room, not walking, but quite literally flying. When he reaches the window, he calmly phases himself through it, his body entering a different plane of existence for the merest of seconds.

About a hundred yards from the building, the phone clicks as the person on the other end picks up the line. " _Hello?_ " The voice is deep and gruff, very matter-of-fact.

"Skulker," the creature says as he flies over the city of Amity Park. There is an ethereal echo to his voice that, if a human on the street below was able to hear, muddles his voice just to the point where it is unintelligible. Only just, though.

" _Vlad Plasmius._ " The voice, presumably Skulker, says the name with no emotion. " _What's the deal, boss?_ "

"The 'deal' is that the preparations are off. The boy… eluded me somehow. I don't want to waste any more resources on this until I know for sure I have him in my possession."

" _He escaped? I thought he was brand new to this,_ " Skulker asks. His voice still hides most of his emotion, but there is surprise present in the inflection.

"He is," the creature, Vlad, affirms. "I will be quite frank with you, Skulker: I'm not exactly sure how he had enough control to do so. Don't you go repeating that anywhere, by the way. The Ghost Zone is already interested enough in this child as is. I don't need anyone else getting in my way at the moment."  
" _Alright, boss,_ " Skulker says. He hesitates, then continues. " _So what are you going to do now?_ "

"Oh, I'll find him, don't you doubt that. He may have some control, but it must be minimal at most. His expertise pales in comparison to mine. I will have him subdued before the week is out."  
" _You could have me hunt down the little whelp. I have better trackers than you do._ "

"No. I'm hoping to get the boy without using any force. He is weak and lost. Scared. I can persuade him to come to me just by playing on how feeble he is. Intimidation and physical interaction are only to be used as a last resort, therefore your methods are unfavorable in these circumstances. Besides, I have a different job for you."

" _What's that?_ " Undertones of irritation at being told off by Vlad lace Skulker's voice.

"Go back to the Ghost Zone. Keep your ear to the ground. Quell any rumors you may hear about the boy. I don't care how you do it, just make sure no one takes an interest in the boy. I cannot have any interference with these plans more so than I already have." Vlad nears the hospital and pulls up, hovering just above the rooftop.

There is a pause, then Skulker replies, " _Yes, Plasmius_." No goodbyes are said as Vlad hangs up. He shuts the phone and holds it in his hand. After a moment's consideration, the hand holding the phone erupts into a deadly pink flame. Within seconds, the phone is nothing more than a handful of ashes, which Vlad allows to shower onto the rooftop below.

Silently, he drops through the roof and into the hospital, making his way to the ICU. When he enters Danny's room, he is mildly surprised to see it quiet and empty. Almost a half hour has passed since the boy's disappearing act, and Vlad expects someone to have checked up on him by now. Best to make this quick, then. Someone will be dropping by any minute.

He closes his eyes and focuses. There, just there. He can feel them. The small remnants of tendrils of power that are not his. Oddly enough, they smell. It reminds him of the smell of wet metal and a lightning storm. Although he crinkles his nose, he is pleased. The scent will make tracking the boy far easier than he'd originally planned.

He follows the trail through the hospital bed and into the basement directly below. There, on the ground, the scent is slightly stronger. The boy must've stayed in that one spot for a while before moving on. The trail continues into a hallway to the side of the large maintenance room he's in. Vlad follows it, hurrying a little faster. It is beginning to disappear, having lingered for some time already now.

At an elevator, he stops abruptly, almost overwhelmed by the strength of the odor. One quick glance at the keycard slot and the shut doors tells him all he needs to know.

"Clever boy," he murmurs under his breath. So the boy had figured out how to phase through the door. No wonder the energy trail was strongest here. Somewhat unexpected for a child of his age this early on in the game, but Vlad finds it to be far more interesting. After all, what fun is it if your prey does not offer you a challenge?

He continues to follow the trail up the elevator shaft (flying intangibly is so much easier than bothering with human machinery) and outside the hospital. He is flying much faster now; the scent is continuing to disappear, and Vlad fears that he will not find the boy before it vanishes completely.

Across the street. Through an alleyway. Down a sidewalk. Into a park. The trail twists and turns, as if the boy had been impossibly lost and trying to find his way, but the constant direction changes do not faze Vlad.

It is in the park that his luck runs out. The trail had been getting more and more difficult to sense, and by the time he entered the park, it was the barest whiff. The slightest breeze even was starting to throw him off track. Finally, underneath a huge oak tree, the trail goes cold and Vlad is left with nothing but the scent of the freshly mown grass.

"No!" he growls, infuriated. The child had eluded his grasp yet again! Vlad is at a loss, and he is stunned to find that this is the first time in his life that he has felt this way multiple times in one day.

Floating just above the ground, unable to be seen by the various park-goers, Vlad watches with his soulless red eyes. His face, though invisible, is twisted into a snarl. "Where are you?" he whispers darkly.

" _I'm going to find you_."

* * *

Danny is in the lab. It's weird seeing everything exactly as he remembered, as if his parents had dropped everything relating to their work when he got caught in his coma. Nothing had changed except…

The Portal.

The last time he'd seen it, almost two months ago, it had been dark and cold. The inside had glowed a soft blue, not unlike his own eyes. All he'd really been able to see was the circuitry and some of the wires on its floor. It was nothing particularly spectacular, and that's exactly what he'd thought back then.

Now it is different. The outer frame is still relatively the same, but the inside now shines a brilliant green. Different shades of the gorgeously horrendous color, all dancing together and intertwining to form a vortex that gives it an unnatural feel. Not alive, certainly not warm or inviting, but… perhaps _awake_ is an appropriate word. Danny can feel the energy cascading from it, wrapping him in a chilly blanket that somehow connects with him. His own personal cold seems to jump towards the portal in excitement and joy, and it is all Danny could do to hold it back.

Just the sight of the thing makes Danny's stomach lurch and his hands start to tremble. This is the machine that had thrown him headfirst into a six-week long dreamless sleep, and then into a new world that was completely unfamiliar to him. This is the machine that cursed him with an ugly scar decorating his arm and an unrelenting pit of cold in his gut that seemed to have a mind of its own. This is the machine that took his life, twisted it like a piece of scrap metal, and threw it back to the ground for the world to kick at.

To say that emotions are washing over him like a tidal wave is an understatement.

Danny breathes in sharply and chokes back a sob he doesn't realize was there. He turns away from the wretched portal and realizes that his hands are clenched into fists. His fingernails are digging into the palm of his hand, leaving marks, but they do not hurt. A dark part of Danny almost wishes that they did. Shakily, he rubs one of his fists at his cheek, swiping away a lone tear.

" _Why do you fret so, young warrior?_ "

The voice comes from behind Danny, and he freezes in surprise. Though he is taken off guard, he realizes that the voice does not come across as cold and accusing, as he'd originally expected, especially after his encounter with Vlad Masters. Instead, the voice is warm and inviting. The question is tinged with a genuine curiosity rather than a bitter distaste. Accompanying is another wave of cold energy. This energy does not meld with Danny's as well as the Portal's, but it is nowhere near as intimidating and off-putting as Vlad's.

He turns around timidly and sees a lioness staring back at him with wide, dark eyes. It's not like a normal lioness, however. It resembles the little vermin-type creatures that had consistently bothered him in his hospital room in that its fur is a glowing lime green. Its tail is firey, for some odd reason, and a pair of leathery bat-like wings are pressed into its back.

"I-I'm not… 'fretting,'" Danny stutters after a long moment. He can't tear his eyes away from the lioness' as hard as he might try.

The lioness tilts her head slightly to the side and her eyes narrow just slightly. Immediately, Danny begins wondering what he's done wrong, but he notices a twinkle of humor in her eyes. Her tail bats away at the air absentmindedly.

Without opening her mouth, she says, " _It is pointless to lie to a spirit such as I, young warrior_."

Danny gapes at the lioness. His mind has yet to catch up with what he is witnessing, and he is rendered speechless. Deciding to ignore the fact that she speaks almost telepathically, he asks, "Spirit? What do you mean?" His voice is weak and shaky, and he mentally kicks himself.

Danny swears that the corners of lioness' mouth turn up just slightly, as if she were smiling. " _All in due time,_ " she says. " _But you have still not answered my question. Why do you distress?_ "

Danny turns his gaze away from her and up towards the portal, still spinning in its mesmerizing pattern. Oddly enough, the longer he stares at it, the more he can practically feel its pull. Like a sailor following a siren to his death, Danny unconsciously takes a cautious step towards it, unable to resist the pull. He steps forward again before -

- _the click on his finger on a button_ -

- _an electric fire in his veins_ -

- _the agonizing feeling of being ripped apart and pieced back together_ -

The flashbacks hit him with a crashing force, so much that he quite literally staggers back and falls to the ground. As he lays there on the cold linoleum, flat on his back, he tries to calm his racing heart and breathing (he's stunned to realize that now, having his breathing and heart rate at that of an average person, it feels far too fast). A bead of cold sweat drips down his back.

The lioness watches the scene unfold, unflinching. There is a look of only mild interest in her dark eyes. " _It is conflicting, is it not?_ " she asks, her voice as calm as ever.

Danny does not move from his position on the floor. As he stares up into the industrial fluorescent lights, he asks, "What do you mean?"

" _Your feelings concerning this machine. It has caused you great loss and great pain, and yet it has saved your life and rebirthed you. There is no doubt that you and it share a connection closer than any other, but you also have unresolved conflict with it, one burned so deep that it may never come to pass._ "

Danny sits up and crosses his legs together. His brows are knitted together in confusion. "Look, uh… miss, no offense, but you're not making any sense. I think I understand the stuff about the portal causing me great pain or whatever, but I have no idea what you're talking about with all that stuff about rebirth and connections."

" _I suppose you may not,_ " she muses, her tail twitching thoughtfully. " _There are many things you have not discovered about yourself, young warrior. This not only includes changes that have arisen from your encounter with the machine, but it also includes the things about yourself you have yet to realize._ "

Danny shakes his head. "I really need you to stop talking in riddles," he mutters, dropping his head into his open palm. Suddenly, he looks up, as if struck by a thought. "Where are my parents? Or Jazz? They should've heard us by now."

" _Your family is not here. They never can come here._ "

At this, Danny jumps to his feet. In a few strides, he is directly in front of the lioness. "Where are they?" he demands, no prelude.

The lioness does not flinch. " _Have you not figured it out? This is a dream. We are in your head. That is why your family will never be here._ "

This gives Danny some pause. He stops and considers it for a moment before shaking head. "No. That's not possible. If this is a dream, how come I can feel that… that _thing_?" he asks, jabbing a finger at the portal.

" _As I stated, you and the machine now have an unbreakable connection. No matter where you are, no matter how you are, it will always be there. It is powerful enough that it is an ever-present force in your mind._ "

"I still don't believe you," Danny says, taking a step back. "I can't be asleep again."

" _You do not believe?_ " she asks. Danny expects the question to come out scathingly, but the emotion in her voice does not change. " _Look around. Everything you see is in exactly the same place as you remember, as you last saw it. Surely you do not believe that your family or anyone else has not entered this place for such an extended period of time?_ "

Danny considers this and decides she has a point, but she continues before he can speak. " _Furthermore, answer me this: if this is real, how did you arrive at this place?_ "

Danny opens his mouth to speak, but he falls silent as he racks his memory. As hard as he tries, he cannot remember anything past entering the park about two blocks from the high school. He was walking in the park, trying to get home, and then suddenly he was home, here in the lab.

" _You cannot remember._ " It is not a question. " _This is a dream. It is undeniable._ "

Danny takes another step back and lowers himself back to the ground. "So…" he begins slowly, unsure of what to say. "So you're not real either?"

The almost-smile returns to the lioness' lips. " _No. I am very much real. I am here, in your mind._ "

Danny hugs his knees to his chest and frowns. There is a deafening silence throughout the room as the lioness watches Danny process everything. With a shocking realization, Danny notices that there is no telltale hum of machinery filling the lab, further hammering in that this is, in fact, a dream. How the lioness is in his mind, he has yet to understand.

"What's happened to me?" he asks after thoughtful consideration. "Why am I like… this?" He gestures to himself, and he can't help but fixate his eyes on the beautifully ugly scar decorating his left arm.

The lioness bows her head, looking away from his eyes for the first time since the beginning of the conversation. " _Alas, that is a question I cannot answer for you. But heed my words: you will find out. This will not be a mystery for long._ "

She looks up to the ceiling suddenly. Danny follows her gaze, but he does not see anything. " _I must go,_ " she says. " _It is time for you to wake up, young warrior. You must go and face this new, brave world._ "

Danny scrambles to his feet. "What? But I'm, like, more confused than ever! You have told me nothing useful at all!" he shouts.

The lioness looks back at him, her eyes hard and wise, and yet twinkling with care. " _Then I shall leave you with three pieces of advice, young warrior. One: it is from the electricity that you were given new life. Therefore, you will always return to the electricity. Remember this as you embark on the path of discovery of these new changes. Two: do not seclude yourself from those around you. Traveling this path will not be easy, and it will be even more treacherous if not done so with the support of your close ones. And three,_ " she says, rising to her feet. She approaches Danny and he realizes she is much bigger than he originally thought. Their eyes are level with each other.

Her lips curl up, and he can see a genuine smile on her face. " _Do not be afraid to be great._ "

With that, Danny wakes up.

He immediately sits upright and begins flailing his arms and legs in shocks. They are entangled in a thin blanket, much too like the one that covered him in the hospital. His entire body is covered in a cold sweat, and his breathing and his heartbeat are accelerated once more.

"Whoa, Daniel! Calm down! Calm down!"

Danny hears the voice, but it does not register. His eyes see the environment around him, but it does not register either. Strong hands wrap themselves around his wrists, trying to restrain his arms. For one terrifying instant, he wonders if Vlad has caught him. He does not feel the invasive energy, though. Despite this, the cold is bubbling up inside him again, pressing against its restraints just as much as Danny's arms are. In his panic, he cannot control it, and the cold washes over his arms for a quick moment. Suddenly, his arms are free.

"What the…" the voice is saying, but Danny is already making his escape. One side is blocked off by a strange, soft wall, so he rolls to the other. The support underneath him gives out, and he hits the floor with a jarring thud. In the distance, he hears the voice shout his name in fright, but he ignores it. He attempts to get to his feet, but his legs are weak. Someone else, big and burly and warm, is there to support him.

"Daniel, please, calm down! Look at me!"

For the first time since waking up, Danny registers what is being said. He looks up and meets small, green eyes, wide with fear. For some reason, he can see a strange green glow reflected in the whites of the eyes. He stops struggling for a moment, giving the person a chance to guide Danny back down into a sitting position on what he'd initially been laying on.

As he sits back down, he starts to register some of the environment around him. For one thing, he is sitting on a worn out but extremely comfortable leather couch in a living room that he does not recognize. The room is small and modest, cozily lit by one lone lamp sitting on the side table. In the corner is a TV playing an old black and white movie, but the sound is turned off. Most impressive, however, are the two floor to ceiling bookshelves completely weighed down with novels of every color and size.

Danny stares for a moment at the room, a realization beginning to tickle at the back of his mind. Slowly, his gaze returns to the small green eyes, which are still wide with terror. His own blue eyes travel downwards, sweeping over a cheap cotton polo, a belly that hangs over the belt, and pants that are beginning to fray at the cuffs. He glances up and sees a clean shaven head that reflects the golden light of the lamp.

"Mr. Lancer?" he asks in barely more than a whisper. He still feels vaguely unreal, for lack of a better world, outside of his dream.

The man's mouth widens into a smile. "Yes, yes! That's good, Daniel, you had me worried for a moment there." He leans back onto his ankles and drops his hands from Danny's, releasing a sigh of relief. "I didn't know if you would wake up again."

A chill runs down Danny's spine at those words, and in that moment, he makes the promise to himself that he will never, ever sleep for such a long period of time again.

His mind still feels as if it's being dragged through the mud, processing the situation much slower than normal. "Wh… what happened to me?"

Mr. Lancer pegs him with a bona fide teacher look, and Danny feels suddenly exposed. He can virtually see the gears in his teacher's mind turning and working out the enigma that is himself. It is not an angry look, but it is uncomfortably analyzing.

"Well, Mr. Fenton," Mr. Lancer says after a long moment, standing up. Danny is somewhat bothered by the sudden switch to the use of his last name, but he brushes it off quickly.

"What's that?" Danny asks timidly, unsure of what Mr. Lancer is doing.

Said teacher turns his back to the boy and drags a finger down the spine of a novel on his bookshelf. Surprisingly, Danny can read the title clear as day despite the dim lighting and the tiny font.

 _The Metamorphosis_ by Franz Kafka.

Mr. Lancer plucks the novel off of the shelf and turns back to Danny. "I believe that's a question only you can answer for yourself."

* * *

 _Whew! Four chapters in about a month and then two months without a peep from me! This chapter was definitely not supposed to take this long, but it fought with me for quite some time. Thankfully, I finally wrangled it under control, and the result is a longer chapter than I'd initially planned, but who doesn't appreciate a longer chapter? It feels a bit filler-y to me, but then again, this is going to be a bit of a slow-plot sort of story. After all, we're talking an elapsing time of months, not days. Still, I may try to start picking up the pace in the next chapter. :)_

 _A big thanks to those of you who have reviewed, favorited, and followed so far! You are the motivation that keeps me posting! I appreciate your kind gestures so much! Unfortunately, I do not believe I will have another update ready until after my graduation, in about two weeks here. Who knows, though? We could see a miracle._

 _Thank you again! Leave me your thoughts in the reviews!_


	6. Chapter 6

_March 29th_

"But this is the moment the town has been waiting for!" cried Bette Coradetti, anchor woman for Amity Park's Channel 6 news, as she was abruptly ushered out of the room of Danny Fenton. Her cameraman followed close behind, tripping over his own feet and landing flat on his butt.

The doctor, Rosenburg he said his name was, poked his head out of the doorframe. "I'm sorry, ma'am, but your news story can wait. This is an extremely sensitive time period and we cannot risk anything going wrong." Without another word, the door was shut in her face.

Bette glared angrily at the door for a moment longer, as if her stare could will it to open. Finally, with a huff, she stalked away. Her cameraman scrambled to his feet, checked over his camera quickly, and followed her.

"These… these _idiots_ don't know what they're doing!" Bette seethed. "Five weeks, Artie! Five weeks I've waited, documenting this kid's boring sleep, and finally something interesting happens, and what do they do? They kick us out!" She pinched the bridge of her nose. "Veronica is not going to appreciate this."

"I'm sure you'll be able to get back in and see him," the cameraman, Artie, said reassuringly. "Who knows? By the time you get to see him again, maybe he'll be able to talk to you and you can get an interview."

"That's not the point! The point is that this is something that is only gonna happen once, and we need to be there to capture the moment! You can't exactly recreated something like this for the cameras, Artie. Real, raw footage. That's what the viewers want. Not staged nonsense.

"Besides, if I wait for an interview, those idiots over on Channel 4 are gonna get the opportunity before us! Once word gets out that the kid is finally awake, everybody's gonna be clamoring all over him. No one knows what happened to him, except for him. Imagine the attention the first channel to get that info out of him will get! We have to be the first, Artie!"

Artie, who had been busy wiping off the lens of his camera, glanced up. "Bette, you gotta give the kid a chance to actually wake up. He's been like death for the past five weeks. He's gone through a traumatic experience."

Bette was quiet, her lips pursed tight together. She did admit, she didn't want to overwhelm the boy. She had a niece, just a smidge younger than the kid. She loved her to death, and she could only imagine how she would feel if she were in the kid's shoes. Still, Amity Park was a sleepy little city. Not much happened. The biggest news in January had been the mayor's new pet guinea pig. This was the story people had been following since the day the town got shaken up by the news that a teenager got put into the ICU in a coma. The people wanted the news; Bette wanted to deliver.

Anchorwoman and cameraman made their sweeping exit out of the hospital. Bette was considering ways to get back into the kid's room as soon as possible as she made her way to the news van stationed at the corner of the block. Suddenly, a chill ran down her spine and goosebumps cascaded down her arms. The temperature of the air seemed to drop a good ten degrees, and it had already been a cooler, early spring day.

"Artie?" she asked timidly. She did not turn around. A nagging voice in her gut of all places told her she would regret it if she turned around.

Unfortunately for her gut, Bette wasn't the kind of woman to follow instructions well.

Slowly, drawing shaky breaths, she turned around to see an empty sidewalk, save for one lone, blowing leaf left over from the fall.

She furrowed her brow. "Artie, if this is some sort of a prank I swear I'll tell Veronica, and you'll be sorry!"

No response.

"Artie, I'm being serious," she said, losing what little confidence she had left as she stepped away from the news van.

"Oh, you're being serious now, are you?"

The voice was like an icicle driving into her heart. Beautiful and cold and so entirely threatening. At first, the voice had been unintelligible; frankly, it had sounded like a poorly tuned radio voice with static layered over it. A minute of consideration though allowed her to fight through the fuzz and interpret what the voice had said.

"I'll have you know I don't take to sarcasm… well…" Bette said, the insult dying on her lips as she turned around once more to face the voice.

The thing standing - no, _floating_ \- in front of her could only be described as a shadow. It was blacker than black and seemed infinitely deep, as if Bette could fall through and never return. The figure shimmered in the light, never retaining the same solid lines for more than a moment. The only features that remained stationary were two dark red eyes filled with malice and a mouth full of pointed teeth curled up into a cruel smile.

"You can understand me, hm?" the creature said in its chilling voice. "Even better! I haven't come across a human that can understand our language in decades!"

After a moment to decipher the message, Bette said, "What do you mean, 'our language'? A human that can understand it?"

What looked like arms and hands emerged from the shadow. "Please, you didn't think I was actually human?" the creature said, placing the hands where Bette imagined hips would be. "All you humans ask the stupidest questions.

"Ah well, I mustn't be picky!" the creature continued, suddenly sounding bright and perky, or as bright and perky as it could sound with its voice. "Besides, I'm lucky I found a medium! Makes things easier for me!"

Bette found herself suddenly worrying for her life. "W-what do you mean?"

If possible, the smile grew even crueler. "Being a medium makes you more susceptible," the creature said, dangerously quiet.

Bette unconsciously took a step backward as she processed the words. "Please don't kill me," she whimpered.

The creature looked hurt, but it was a fake look. "You think me so awful that I would kill you? I'm a much more honorable woman than that!"

Bette continued making her way backwards, but the shadow creature never got further away. On the bright side, it never grew closer, either. "Whatever you're gonna do to me, I don't want it," she said, trying to sound intense and failing spectacularly.

"Well of course you're not gonna want it," the creature laughed. "I will admit I said I wasn't gonna kill you." The smile returned, accompanied by an evil glint in its eyes. "But I am gonna make you wish you were dead."

Bette barely had time to let loose a blood-curling scream before the creature launched itself at her and her world went black.

* * *

Penelope Spectra fiddled with her new, shockingly red hair as green eyes - _her own_ green eyes! - stared back at her in a mirror.

"Human hair is by far one of the strangest things," she said, letting the hair fall back onto her neck. "It just… lies there."

"Humans are just strange creatures, period," a green blob said, speaking from a luxurious hotel bed. The two had helped themselves to an empty room in one of Amity Park's finer hotels. The menacing aura the both emitted from them was enough to steer most everybody away from the room.

"Now Bertrand," Spectra chided, turning and putting her hands on her hips. "We mustn't be insulting! These humans are so… kind to let us into their world and utilize their resources."

The sickly green blob, Bertrand, scoffed. "Says the ghost who just killed a human."

"I did not kill her!" Spectra said, turning back towards the mirror and running her well-manicured hand through her hair. "She's still perfectly alive. She's just nothing but an empty shell of herself in the back of her mind." Spectra let out a laugh, a short, bark-like sound. "Mediums. They think they're so high and mighty and better than everyone when in reality, they're the weakest of all of these pathetic things."

"From what you told me, it didn't sound like she even knew she was a medium," Bertrand pointed out.

Spectra considered this for a moment. "True, true. Still, it's fun getting to defeat a human who thinks she's so amazing. I'm looking through her memories right now and boy, does this one have a narcissistic complex! Although…" she trailed off, looking down at her body, still clad in a sharp red business suit, almost as red as her hair. She ran her hands down her sides and her thighs, mulling it over thoughtfully. "With a body like this, I can see why."

"And you say she's the vain one," Bertrand muttered under his breath.

"What was that?"

"Nothing, nothing," he said quickly. He cleared his throat. "Why do you need a body anyway? What's wrong with your shadow form?"

"If I'm to find the human who so generously opened the portal for us," Spectra said, her voice practically a purr, "I need to blend in. Best not to frighten the locals too much, hm?"

"Blend in? You chose one of the most popular humans in this town!"

"Strategy, Bertrand, strategy," Spectra said, walking towards the bed "This woman is a _reporter_. She can get into places that other humans can't. Perfect for investigation! And besides," she said, dropping her voice to a whisper and leaning in close to Bertrand, "she already knows who opened the portal."

Bertrand, suddenly interested, sat up. "Who?"

Spectra straightened up. "To be honest, I don't quite know. I haven't been able to access those memories yet," she said. "But all in due time, Bertrand, all in due time."

She suddenly felt a new presence in the vicinity, pushing against her own cold core. She rolled her eyes, none too concerned. "Wonderful. Visitors," she said, apathy and sarcasm dripping from each word.

A new ghost, one that looked more like a robot than a ghost, flew through the wall and into the room. Soulless green eyes surveyed the situation before landing on Bertrand. "Cousin," the newcomer acknowledged in a deep voice, nodding once in Bertrand's direction.

"Skulker," Bertrand replied, mimicking his cousin.

Skulker turned towards Spectra, who was watching with interest. "Penelope?" he asked. The last time he had seen her, she had not been wearing human skin.

Spectra smiled. "Like the new look?" she asked, twirling once. "It feels so nice to have actual legs again."

Skulker showed no sign of emotion. "What are you doing here?" he asked. "If Plasmius finds you here, he'll -"

"Blah, blah, blah," Spectra cut him off, miming speaking motion with her hand. "That half-breed nothing can go straight to the Nether, for all I care. He thinks he's so high and mighty when he's really just a half-baked version of us."

Skulker, once again, showed no change in emotion, but Spectra thought she saw the barest flicker of worry cross his eyes. She broke into a wide, toothy grin. "Ah ha, the 'Greatest Hunter in the Ghost Zone' is scared of a human?" she said, barely containing her laughter. "Ha! This is gold!"

Skulker finally frowned. "Stop it, Spectra," he said, but his voice was not particularly commanding.

"' _Stop it_ '" she mocked. "Why should I? This is delicious! Oh! I know! What if I did this?" she asked eagerly, sweeping a hand over her head. As if by magic, the previously limp hair stood straight up, gathered into two horn-looking styles, not unlike Vlad Plasmius'. "I'm Plasmius," she said in a mockingly deep voice, puffing out her chest. "Obey my every whim and command, Skulker! I'm so scary!"

Skulker's frown deepened. "I won't hesitate to attack you, Spectra. I'm not afraid to make a scene in front of humans."

"You wouldn't attack me," Spectra said flippantly, turning towards the mirror. She caught a glimpse of herself, then turned fully to face the mirror. She ran a hand over her new hair and hummed to herself. "I actually quite like this, I might keep it," she murmured.

She clapped her hands together and spun on her heel, turning back towards Skulker. "As I was saying, you wouldn't hurt me. After all, I've taken such good care of your cousin," she said, taking on a sly tone. Her smile grew when she saw Skulker's gaze flicker over to Bertrand for the barest of moments.

"I don't need taking care of," Bertrand said indignantly, huffing and crossing his arms.

"Hush, Bertrand," Spectra said, waving him away. "I mean let's face it, Skulker. You've got that fancy ecto-skeleton keeping you stable, but what does poor Bertrand have? Nothing. Just me. Because you left him on a rock in the middle of the Ghost Zone to rot." She leaned in closer and closer until their noses were practically touching. "He needs me to keep him alive because you abandoned your own family," she said in little more than a whisper.

Skulker's face was twitching, and doubt and guilt began to creep into his eyes. Suddenly, he regained his composure and straightened up. "I know what you're trying to do to me Spectra, and it won't work. Your tricks are useless on me."

Spectra's smile didn't falter, but she did lean back. "I suppose it was worth a shot," she said nonchalantly. "Still, you do owe me for making sure Bertrand stays stable. I think the situation calls for me to cash in, don't you think?"

Skulker was quiet for a long moment. "What do you want?"

"Ah, now we're talking!" she said. "I just want three little things from you, okay? Sound fair?"

"Just get on with it."

"You're so impatient. First, I want you to promise me that you'll keep to your word. Abandoner of family you may be, but you're still an honorable man, yes?"

Skulker's mouth was tight. If he had lips, they'd be white from pressure. "I give you my word," he said quietly.

Spectra's grin was borderline maniacal. "One: you can't tell Plasmius that Bertrand and I are here. Wouldn't want to endanger your cousin, no? Two: I need the information I know you have on the human who opened the portal. Don't try to deny it; obviously you're here on business for Plasmius and that hybrid dolt needs to poke his nose into _everything_ that happens."

"How did you know - you know what?" Skulker literally waved her words away. "Enough with the side commentary, Spectra, what's the third thing?"

Her smile grew softer and more light-hearted, all of a sudden. "Get me something to eat. These human bodies get ever so hungry."

* * *

As Skulker flew away from the hotel, he berated himself for falling prey to Spectra's dirty tricks - _again_. So what if he felt a little guilty about his cousin? The remorse wasn't strong enough for her to play on. Then again, she was one of the more frighteningly powerful ghosts that he knew of. Her specialty was the power of suggestion. When she willed it, her words took on a hypnotic edge, one not many people were able to resist.

Skulker apparently included.

Now, as he was flying farther away from her, the hypnosis was wearing off, and he was coming to his senses. What had he been thinking, making a promise to Spectra? Especially before he knew what her terms were? Deceitful as she was, she was right about one thing: he was a ghost of his word. He did not break his promises lightly.

And as much as he didn't want to think about it, he didn't want to know what she might do to Bertrand if he backed down.

The metaphorical fork in the road was clear. He could hold true to his promise with Spectra and risk Plasmius' wrath, or he could rat her out to Plasmius and risk _her_ wrath. Neither was one he wanted to see.

Below him was a human restaurant, crawling with all kinds of people holding trays and brown bags and cups. Not too far in the distance, he could see the bright, gigantic sign that marked the house where the new portal was. Forget metaphorical fork in the road, it was physical as well.

He slowed to a stop and hovered invisibly for a moment. The decision was there: who did he want to see pleased?

No, it was a different decision, one he didn't want to admit he had to make.

 _Who was he more scared of?_

Whether he liked it or not, the answer was clear.

* * *

Vlad's Wednesday, March 29th, had been chock full of important meetings and business calls. With tax day approaching and so many funds to keep track of, he was busier than normal around this time of year.

Of course, all of his plans changed when he felt a subtle shift in the atmosphere, about mid-morning. It paled in comparison to the feeling he would experience at 8:54 am on the coming Sunday, but it was enough to worry him and clear his schedule for the day.

He'd sent Skulker to Amity Park earlier that day to investigate the shift. Assumedly, it had to do with what had happened last month.

It was no secret in the Ghost Zone that a new, completely stable portal had opened about five weeks prior, and it was no secret that it led to a family's basement in a sleepy Midwestern town called Amity Park. What no one knew was how it had opened or who had created it.

Vlad grimaced as painful memories from twenty years ago flashed before him. He already knew who had built it; there could only be one couple who would even try. And besides, he'd received an email from Jack Fenton in February, outlining everything for him

What he wasn't sure of was how it had activated. In Jack's email, he'd described how everything went according to plan except for the activation. It had followed through the startup sequence but never fully stabilized into the portal. A couple of days later, Skulker came to him with news of a new stable portal. The news was so groundbreaking that Vlad had to go and investigate for himself.

Unsurprisingly, the portal led to the Fenton family's basement. What was surprising though was how empty and abandoned it was. Knowing Jack and Maddie (and he knew them well), they'd be chomping at the bit to play with their new toy. They were nowhere to be seen however. A quick scan of the house showed it to be completely devoid of people. What came as more of a surprise were the two clearly lived in bedrooms upstairs: one pink and decorated with posters of Einstein, Pavlov, and Tesla, the other blue and littered with NASA memorabilia.

Vlad always knew that his college friends had kids, a girl and a boy, if he remembered correctly, but seeing their rooms solidified it in such a final way that made him stop in a sudden wash of sadness and nostalgia. To think, this all could've been his if Maddie had just married him instead of Jack.

He didn't dwell on it for long.

He changed back from his ghost form into his more human appearance and knocked on the neighbor's door. When the woman opened up the door, he gave her the excuse that he was passing through the town and looking to reconnect with his old college friends before he left.

"Oh, you didn't know?" the little old lady asked sympathetically. "Their son was in a terrible accident. He was barely alive, from the looks of it. Bless her heart, his sister came up to my door in tears, telling me her brother was dead on their floor. Not even a day ago! You know, I've never approved of that family's activities, it's blasphemous in the eyes of the Lord, but I'll say no parent should ever have to see their child get carted away in an ambulance. Bless their souls, bless them…"

Vlad interrupted her rambling. "How dreadful!" he exclaimed, half feigning his surprise. It was difficult to feel sympathy for Jack, but for Maddie, his heart went out to. "Where are they now, then?"

The lady explained they were at the hospital and pointed him in the general direction before bidding him farewell. He wasted no time in flying over to the hospital.

In his human form, he asked the front lobby receptionist where the Fenton family was. She told him that due to the boy's critical condition, no one, not even family, was allowed to visit him at the moment, but he could certainly go see the family in the waiting room of the ICU.

He didn't make himself known to the Fentons, but he did pass by them invisibly on his search for the boy. Their girl was a sobbing mess, hugging Jack tightly and getting snot and tears all over his jumpsuit. Maddie sat next to them, stone-faced, staring off into the distance at nothing in particular. It disheartened Vlad to see her in that position. Still, there was no time to lose. A sense of familiar dread was constricting his being, and he wondered if it was even worth it to find the child.

 _Yes. By the name of Pariah it was._

He only had to float invisibly through three rooms before stumbling across the room where the boy was being treated. He stretched his neck to see the boy's face from behind the frantic doctors trying to save his life, and…

Nothing. His face was clean.

Despite not needing to breathe, a sigh rolled out from between Vlad's lips, one full of relief and disappointment. Relief because that meant he was still the only one of his kind in existence. Disappointment because of the same reason.

He didn't bother to watch the nitty-gritty of the revival process. For all he knew, the boy would die anyway. If his suspicions were true, then the boy's chances of living through the night were slim.

Still…

As Vlad flew away from the hospital that cold February day, he pulled a disposable cell phone from an unseen pocket. A quick speed dial was all it took to get a voice on the other end.

" _Plasmius?_ " The voice belonged to Skulker. " _It's been awhile._ "

"Yes, yes it has," Vlad said distractedly. "However, seeing as I continue to fund your pet projects, I find it fitting that I request your services again."

" _I understand my debt well, Plasmius. There's no need to remind me. What do you need me to do?_ "

"There's a human child I need you to keep tabs on for me. I believe he may be responsible for the portal's opening, and he's been in an accident as a result. He's in the hospital closest to the portal."

Vlad could practically hear Skulker's contemplative frown on the other end of the line. " _A human child? Plasmius, running errands for you in the Ghost Zone is one thing, but humans aren't to be played with._ "

"And yet you dared to engage with me all those years ago, hm?" Vlad retorted. "You pride yourself on being the best hunter in the Ghost Zone. Prove yourself now. Should be a fun challenge, especially considering he's the son of two ghost hunters."

" _Son of -_ " Skulker said. " _You're asking me to sign my death wish, Plasmius. If I could have one, that is._ "

"It won't be as bad as you think. The boy may not even survive more than twenty-four hours. I would just like to be kept aware of his status. It's not too much to ask."

Reluctant as he was, Skulker obliged.

That day had been five weeks ago. Now, as the days of March dwindled down, Vlad awaited Skulker's latest report. Against all odds, Jack and Maddie's son survived, albeit through a coma state. Skulker was becoming bored of reporting on a sleeping human child, but the sudden shift prompted Vlad to order a preemptive report, two days before the usual due date of Friday evening. Thus when a new chill invaded his underground laboratory, he smiled and turned towards his own open portal. Skulker stood there, silhouetted by the eerie green glow.

"What's the news?" Although wearing his human guise, he spoke in a strange tongue that filled the room with a soft static.

Skulker hesitated for the barest moment. "The child - he awoke today. It was only for a short amount of time; he's asleep again, for who knows how long."

Vlad leaned back against the counter he'd been working at. "Typical of coma patients. They wake up sporadically sometimes. He probably wasn't even aware of what was going on."

"That's the thing, boss. He was fully aware, as far as I could tell. Responding to his mother and the doctors. He even had a fit when he saw one of the doctors' machines. That's when he fell asleep again."

Vlad's brows furrowed at this news. It certainly wasn't impossible that the boy could wake up out of a five week coma completely coherent right away, just very unlikely. A thought tickled at the back of his head, but he pushed it away, blaming it on paranoia.

He'd seen the child, and Skulker continued to report the same thing: a clean face.

 _Now_ _ **that**_ _would be impossible._

Vlad turned his back to Skulker, waving him off. "Keep watching the boy. I want to know the second something changes in the boy's condition."

Without Vlad's eyes on him, Skulker relaxed visibly. "Yes, sir," he said, turning back towards the portal.

"Oh, and Skulker?"

The ghost froze. "Yes?"

"Was there something else you wanted to tell me?"

This time the hesitation was longer. Skulker knew that with every passing second, Vlad's suspicions would only grow. This was proven when Vlad turned back towards him with one dark eyebrow raised. "Well, Skulker?"

In that moment, Skulker made a split second decision.

"No, sir. Nothing at all."

350 miles away from Wisconsin, in Amity Park, Penelope Spectra sat on her plush hotel bed, happily munching on a hamburger delivered to her by Skulker, daydreaming about the plans to come.

* * *

 _Just to be clear, this entire chapter takes place on Wednesday, March 29. In other words, it's the same day as chapter 1, when Danny first wakes up. Obviously the exception to this rule is Vlad's flashback to February, where we get another point of view of the day of the accident._

 _Obviously this chapter takes the story farther and farther away from canon. I know I originally indicated that this wouldn't stray too far from the canon, but due to recent plot developments, I may have to rescind that statement. This story will certainly have elements of the canon, but I don't think it will follow the same storyline as the original show. That should be the only difference, however, other than stuff I've tried to add detail to. To put it in simpler terms, I'm writing a reimagining of the show, with all of the same characters and such, but taking a different path than the cartoon. Hopefully a slightly more realistic path. Hopefully that explanation makes sense! :)_

 _As always, your thoughts are appreciated! I still get way too excited when I see new reviews :D_


	7. Chapter 7

Edward Lancer frowns as he watches his student - his student who is _supposed_ to be in the hospital - shiver uncontrollably. "Daniel, are you okay?"

Danny's eyes jerk up from the book Edward is holding in his hands. "Y-yeah, I think so," he says, but there is a distinct quaver in his voice.

Edward sets the book back down on the shelf and sits down in his armchair. "Are you sure? You're shaking like a leaf."

"I'm fine, I'm just…" Danny says, trailing off. His gaze drifts from Edward to the empty seat beside him, but then quickly snaps back up to meet Edward's eyes. He's startled by how piercing his student's gaze is and how much those blue eyes are peering into his soul. Edward shifts unconsciously in his seat as an uncomfortable dread trickles into the back of his head.

"How did I get here?" Danny suddenly asks.

Edward isn't surprised by the question. He leans forward and rests his chin on his fists. Unsure of where to begin, he asks, "What do you last remember?"

Danny's brows furrow. "I, uh, there was this… guy," he begins, "And he… He wanted to take me, I think. I don't know, it all happened so fast. And then I wa-was in the basement of the hospital and I got out and I was gonna go home but I, uh…" His voice dwindles away. "I don't know. Now I'm here."

While he isn't surprised by the vague amount of detail - goodness knows how that boy's memory was affected - Edward is taken aback by the mention of a man wanting to kidnap Danny. True, his parents do receive an occasional threat, usually from religious extremists or vehement deniers of the supernatural, but nothing serious, and nothing ever directed at the Fenton children. Who on earth would want to steal a fourteen year old boy from a hospital? And how did a boy attached to monitors and IVs ever escape a man that could move freely?

"I guess I must've passed out," Danny continues. "And then… you found me?"

Edward pushes aside all of his questions to answer Danny's. "Yes. I found you in the park, the one a couple of blocks down from the school. I like to eat my lunch there sometimes. I didn't expect to find you, however. I took the rest of the day off and brought you home. You've been asleep since then."

Danny's gaze is darting back and forth now, between Edward and random spots around the room: the couch, the coffee table, the space right next to the armchair. All are empty and unoccupied. Edward vaguely wonders if he's just trying to avoid eye contact, or if he's nervous, or if he sees something that Edward himself can't.

 _Where did that last thought come from?_

"Why didn't you take me back to the hospital?" Danny asks. He's focusing fixedly on Edward's lap now. "Or at least back to my house?"

Edward stares at the boy for a long moment. This is the part of the story where things get complicated, he knows, and he doesn't quite know how to break it to Danny. He had taken it for what it was when it had happened, but now that he is being confronted with it, he's not sure what to think.

He leans back in his seat and exhales. "You told me not to take you there," he says, with the barest hint of a smile on his face.

Poor Danny looks more confused than ever. He gives Edward a hard look with his intense blue eyes. "What? I thought I was asleep." Despite the way he's looking at Edward, his voice still sounds timid and lost.

Edward hesitates for just a moment before continuing. "You _were_ asleep," he begins slowly. "And you didn't _tell_ me, per say. When I got you into my car I had every full intention of taking you back to the hospital but then…" He folds his hands together and contemplates his next words. "The strangest feeling came over me. I don't even know if I can describe it. I was practically overwhelmed by a nagging voice telling me _not_ to take you to the hospital, or even to your house. The weirdest part was that it was distinctly _your voice_ telling me this. And I swear I don't normally make it a point to imagine things in my students' voices. Not that I was imagining it. I could hear you speak as clear as a bell."

Danny continues to stare at Edward, the hard gaze melting into a narrowed, puzzled one. "I don't really know what to tell you, Mr. Lancer," he says quietly. "I didn't do anything, at least, I don't think I did. It's hard to tell right now." His gaze suddenly flicks back down to the floor.

"What do you mean by that?"

Danny ignores him, seemingly lost in his own little world. Edward watches carefully as Danny's eyes follow a distinct path around the living room before settling back on the floor next to the armchair Edward is sitting in.

"Danny? Are you alright?" he asks, beginning to get concerned by the odd behavior.

Danny ignores Edward a moment more before looking him in the eye once more. This time, Edward can see _something_ swirling behind Danny's blue irises, but he can't put his finger on it. Was it just him, or did Danny's eyes seem… _greener_?

"Do you have a dog, Mr. Lancer?" Danny asks. This time, Edward is completely taken by surprise by the random question.

"A dog?" he repeats, somewhat weakly. "Not… not anymore; he was hit by a car a few years back. What on earth does this have to do with your situation?"

Danny stares for a moment longer at the corner of the armchair before meeting Edward's eyes. He opens his mouth to speak, pauses and closes it, then says, "I don't know. I'm sorry."

"I'm just trying to help you, Daniel. Clearly, you've been through some rough times, and I'm worried you're bottling it all up. It's not healthy, especially for someone so young as you."

Danny releases a humorless laugh. "You sound kind of like my sister," he mumbles. His eyes jerk away from Edward's and onto his own lap. Slowly, he begins moving his hand deliberately over the empty space.

A Beautiful Mind, _he must be hallucinating_ , Edward thinks. _Maybe I really do need to take him back to the hospital._

As if hearing his thoughts, Danny speaks up. "I know you're worried about me, but please don't take me back. I don't know if that guy is still there, and I really don't want to find out."

"Yes, about the man…" Edward says, watching Danny's methodical stroking carefully. "You said he wanted to take you? Do you know why he would want to kidnap you?" Frankly, he isn't sure he wants to hear the answer. The idea of one of his students being a target of a kidnapping plot is extremely unsettling.

Danny frowns. "He told me," he begins, but his voice is quiet and weak. "He told me he could help me. And that he had the answers I was looking for. He, uh, he said he wanted me to… join him, I guess. That's what he said, anyway."

Edward considers this for a moment. Being an English teacher, the word choice sticks out to him. "Join him? How so?"

"I dunno," Danny says, shrugging. "I was too busy concentrating on… Uh, well I was distracted, I think."

"You _think_?"

Danny's hand stops moving and drops to his side. He still stares solemnly into his lap. Edward watches as a shiver cascades down Danny's body. The poor boy must be freezing; he's still wearing nothing but the thin hospital gown.

Still, a different thought nags at Edward. "Daniel, is there something wrong? Did something else happen with the man at the hospital?"

Danny's body language gives Edward all the answer he really needs to know that something is still being kept away from him. The way he stiffens up just slightly, the way his eyes widen beneath his bangs, the way he suddenly looks smaller than ever before. He can practically see the gears in the boy's head turning, debating whether to tell his teacher the truth or not. It almost breaks Edward's heart, to think one of his students doesn't trust him enough to tell him about serious situations like this. He tries to be the kind of teacher who is welcoming and caring of his students' problems while maintaining a well ordered and well educated classroom. Did he fail as a teacher, then?

Unless if the man threatened Danny…

Edward pushes that thought as far away as possible immediately.

Finally, after what seems like an eternity of silence, in the barest whisper, Danny says, "I don't think you'd believe me if I told you."

"Try me," Edward says, giving him a small smile. "I have a pretty open mind. I do read a lot of books."

Danny folds in on himself as he leans back into the couch. By this point, he's started to shiver again. Oddly enough, Edward feels as though he wants to shiver, too. The temperature of the room has suddenly dropped a few degrees.

"Things have been happening to me since I, um, since I woke up," Danny begins slowly. "Things that I can't explain, and they're really scary. Like it's so cold, like right here -" he balls a fist just above his navel "- and it's like it has a mind of its own! It's made me… made me do stuff."

Edward sits back himself and gauges Danny's body language again. "So something cold in your stomach told you to do things? Like, bad things?" he asks as he watches his student. Despite the timidness, he seems genuinely honest.

"No, no, not like that," Danny says, shaking his head. "I just - just, I can feel it, I guess, like you said you heard me talking to you. It doesn't like _literally_ have a mind of its own, at least, I don't think, but it kind of sort of does. And it doesn't tell me to do things, I mean I don't really know, it just kind of feels like instinct I guess. It helps me do these things, or allows me to. Like under normal circumstances, I wouldn't be able to do these things."

"You still haven't explained what these 'things' are, Daniel."

Danny draws in a shaky breath. "C-can I ask you a question, first?"

Edward is beginning to get annoyed by Danny's consistent dodging of certain topics, but he obliges anyway, for a reason beyond him. Maybe he feels compelled because of pity.

Danny is now staring at the hutch acting as a TV stand. "What was your dog's name?" he asks.

Edward frowns. "It was Rex, but I don't see wh-"

"Rex!" Danny calls, cutting Edward off. He pats his leg a couple of times, and a moment later, he's stroking thin air once more.

The teacher stares, unsure of what just happened. A vague idea starts blossoming at the back of his head, but the notion is so frightening, he tries not to think about it. "Danny, I don't exactly know what you're playing at, but it's not funny."

"I'm not playing at anything, Mr. Lancer," Danny says, staring into his lap. "I can see him. Your dog, I mean. He's sitting in my lap right now."

Edward is at a loss for words. "You can see… my dead dog?" he says weakly.

Danny nods slowly. "Yeah. I don't know why, though. I mean, it's not just your dog I'm seeing, either. There's tons of little animals and stuff I can see, and I don't think anybody else really can. They don't even seem to pay attention to them, you know? Like Rex was running all around the room and barking like crazy just a bit ago, and you didn't notice at all." His voice starts to devolve into a cracking, rambling mess.

"I'm sorry, Daniel, I know I said I have an open mind, but I just find this all a little hard to believe…"

"And there's more," Danny continues, as though he didn't hear Edward at all. He is speaking faster and the pitch of his voice is getting higher. "Like when I first woke up, and then with the man in the hospital, and there was a time with Kwan, this-this cold _thing_ inside me caused me to pass _through_ things, like they weren't even there! And it's so random, too; I was only actually able to control it once, and even then, I barely had any control."

Edward can only watch as Danny raves and rants. His mind is spinning at a hundred miles an hour as he tries to comprehend what the boy is spewing at him. All this about seeing dead animals and passing through objects and cold entities has him reeling. This was something that he had not signed up for when he took Danny into his home.

Still, he is a teacher, and he is applying for the recently open vice principal position. What would it say about him if he didn't help his struggling student when the kid obviously needed it?

When Danny finally pauses to take a breath - and if Edward had been paying close enough attention, he would notice that it took abnormally long for him to do so - he cuts in. "Daniel, I can't pretend to understand what's going on with you. Frankly, I'm still partially skeptical myself. I never expected something like _this_ to be your problem. I'm starting to think it's best if I take you back to your parents now; they're much better equipped to help you."

Danny shakes his head vehemently. "They'll only freak out. They'll think I'm being, like, _possessed_ or something."

Edward raises an eyebrow. "Are you?"

Blue eyes turn onto Edward's, and he resists the urge to cringe under their hard gaze. "No! Of course not!" he exclaims. Then, much quieter, he adds, "I'm still normal."

"Forgive me for saying this, but seeing dead animals isn't exactly normal."

Danny presses his forehead into his knees. "I know."

Edward misses the single tear that escapes Danny's eye.

Shakily, Danny continues. "I can feel it," he mutters, pressing the heels of his palms into the sides of his head.

Still floundering for answers, Edward asks, "Feel what?"

"I-I think it's… it's my parent's portal," Danny says quietly.

The mention of a portal rings a bell. Having been privy to some of the vague details of Danny's accident being his teacher, Edward knows that one of Jack and Maddie's inventions - specifically this portal - had been responsible for Danny's unprecedented brush with death. "How do you mean, feel it?"

Now Danny's chin is resting on his knees, staring straight ahead. His hands still press at his forehead. "It's in my head. I don't know how to describe it, it's just _there_. It's like she said…"

Edward waits for him to continue, but he doesn't elaborate. A man wanting him to join his side, a woman telling him things about his parent's portal. When will Danny Fenton stop meeting these mysterious people?

"It's like who said?" he asks gently.

Danny opens his mouth to speak but suddenly stiffens up. His blue eyes open wide and see nothing. It might be Edward's imagination, but he swears he sees a trail of discolored air float out of Danny's open mouth and dissipate into the atmosphere. Instantly, the teacher is on red alert.

"Danny? What's wrong?" he asks, standing up. There's no dreaming it this time: the temperature of the room has dropped significantly.

"I… I don't know," Danny says. To Edward, it sounds as though the boy isn't fully aware of his surroundings. "Somethi- someone's…" he stammers.

Just as quickly as he stiffened, he folds back in on himself, but this time he is clutching his torso and a grimace distorts his face. His eyes are screwed shut in what appears to be pain. His body seizes up and starts shaking like a leaf.

Now Edward is truly panicking. "Danny!" he says. He lays a hand on the boy's shoulder but draws it back almost immediately. He is absolutely freezing to the touch.

As Edward picks up his phone to dial 9-1-1, an unseen wind picks up in the room, shuffling papers on the coffee table and tousling Danny's black hair. If it could be possible, the room gets even colder, causing Edward to shiver uncontrollably. His lights begin to flicker and dim, pushing the room into darkness. The only steady, bright light comes from Danny's left arm, where his odd lightning scar has began to glow a vile green.

"Daniel!" he tries one more time, desperately trying to reach the boy.

"I can't -" Danny says through clenched teeth and labored gasps. "I - It's… it's trying to - to take over, I..."

Danny's voice cuts off as his form begins to flicker between darkness and full color. The room fills with the smell of ozone, and Edward hears a thin crackling echo off of the walls. As the hairs on his arms stand up, he is forced to take a step back when a wave of invisible energy hits him. Simultaneously, with a resounding crack, a ring of blinding blue-white light - blinding blue-white _electricity_ \- explodes to life around Danny's waist.

Edward backs away from Danny faster than he's ever moved in his life. Something in his gut is telling him to run away as fast as he can, but the teacher side of him refuses to leave the boy alone in this state.

The ring of electricity around Danny's waist disappears as suddenly as it appeared, and Danny's form stabilizes for a moment. He gasps for breath, but it's all he has time to do before the ring reappears. From the look on Danny's face, he's fighting it with all of his might, whatever it is.

Edward can only watch in wide-eyed horror as the boy battles with himself. The ring seems to grow wider for a moment before shrinking back down and almost disappearing. It goes back and forth from nonexistent to full force a few times before Danny manages to choke a few words out. "Window… so-someone… window…"

For the second time that day, Edward is flooded with an overwhelming sense of duty to do what Danny's voice tells him to do. The voice - Danny's voice - echoes in his head, telling him to turn around, to look out the window.

 _Turn around_.

Edward obeys.

At first, he doesn't see anything out the window. Then, impossibly, the air shimmers, and he catches the barest glimpse of the silhouette of a woman with strange, angular hair. Just as quickly as he sees it, it goes away. Almost immediately, some of the wind dies down and the temperature of the room rises a little bit.

He stares out the window for a moment longer before turning back to Danny. He opens his mouth to speak, but freezes as he watches the boy.

The ring recedes back into nothingness, and the sensation of electricity in the air dies away. Slowly, the rest of the wind settles down and the temperature of the room returns to normal. The lights flicker back on one by one, and the green glowing from Danny's arm fades away.

Before Edward can ask Danny what on earth just happened, the boy opens his eyes for a split second, wider than what has to be normal. Not a moment later, however, he swoons, and Edward lurches forward to catch him before his forehead crashes into the coffee table.

The teacher kneels there for a moment, holding his student's limp body in his arms, trying to process what he just saw. It was a scene straight out of a horror movie, for goodness' sake. And there was no doubt whatsoever that Danny had at least partially been the cause of it. There was one other thing that frightened Edward about the situation as well.

When Danny had opened his eyes for that fleeting moment, they had been undoubtedly a bright, glowing, acidic green.

* * *

Spectra, still in Bette Coradetti's body, invisibly watches the conversation between Danny and Edward unfold from outside the latter's living room window. As the two discuss the events that led up to their meeting, she scoffs. "Humans," she says quietly. She'll never admit it, but she's scared of alerting the boy to her presence. Nobody, not even Skulker or Vlad, has seen what he's capable of. "So close-minded."

Bertrand hovers back and forth, also invisible. He wears a deep scowl on his face. "Can we get going?" he asks, his voice borderline whining. "Someone's gonna find out we're here, and once someone discovers us, _he'll_ find out about us, too!"

Spectra rolls her eyes. "Lighten up, Bertrand, no one can see us. This is important; I need to get an idea of him before I can implement my plan!"

"What is your plan anyway?"

Spectra, lowering her invisibility just the slightest, turns to him and lowers her sunglasses. She winks and presses a long, thin finger to her ruby red lips. Bertrand huffs, turns away, and scowls harder, muttering, "She never lets me in on her plans…"

Spectra ignores the comment. After a few centuries of dealing with Bertrand, she's found that letting him vent to himself is far more beneficial than acting on it. Besides, it got him out of her hair for a moment. And this moment was far too precious to go to waste.

She watches Danny carefully as he tracks the movements of the annoying dog racing around the human's living room. This was an unsettling observation; it meant that he could see ghosts, even those not normally visible on the human plane. Did it mean he could see her if he turned his head? Theoretically, the answer was no. If they had been in their world, on the ghost plane, the answer would be different, but as long as she kept her invisibility fully powered, she should be safe.

Theoretically. There was no telling the extent of the boy's powers.

Bertrand nudges her. How he can tell where she is, she has no idea. "I don't like this. You think you're so untouchable, but he has eyes everywhere, I mean the second he finds out the kid's awake -"

"Bertrand," Spectra says sharply, not taking her eyes off of the scene inside. "Plasmius already knows he's awake. Skulker told me a few hours ago. Somehow, the boy managed to escape him and wind up here. Plasmius was all up in a tizzy about it."

"Doesn't that make this little stakeout mission all the more dangerous? Plasmius has got to be searching for this kid like no tomorrow."

"No, Bertrand, don't you see?" Spectra says, a maniacal grin spreading across her lips. "The fact that somehow, this inexperienced child of all people managed to slip through Plasmius' fingers makes this even more exciting. Who knows how powerful he is?"

Bertrand shakes his head, frustrated, though Spectra can't see. "Why does it matter how powerful he is? It was probably just a fluke. There's no way a human child can outmatch Plasmius."

"Because," she says, her tone dangerous, "the more power he has, the more power _I_ will have. There's something different about him, can't you feel it? He's not like Plasmius."

"Of course I can feel it. That doesn't mean he's more powerful than Plasmius. In fact, there's no way he can be more powerful than him."

"Maybe not now, but later, possibly. He just needs time." Spectra shifts her weight and leans on the windowsill. "After all, it took the oh-so-high-and-mighty Plasmius twenty years to get to where he is now, right?"

Bertrand scoffs. "You're willing to wait twenty years for this kid to mature?"

"Mm," Spectra hums. She watches as Danny tells his teacher how he can see the dog. "Something tells me it won't take that long."

Suddenly, an idea starts to form. "I wonder how much control he has," she mutters. Before Bertrand can interject and tell her that it's a bad idea, she closes her eyes and focuses on her energy, bundled in the very center of her body.

With a little bit of concentration, she forces her energy - her ectosignature, as many have dubbed it - out of her body and into the house. If it can reach the boy and interfere with his own energy, it could trigger a reaction, and she'd be able to see even more the extent of his powers.

It takes a minute, but her presence eventually reaches the boy, and the results are not disappointing. He reacts immediately, and Spectra's grin widens. _Yes, I'm in your territory_ , she tells him silently. _What are you going to do about it?_

Even though she cannot feel what he feels, she can still tell as his own energy awakens. He struggles to keep it under control, especially in the presence of his teacher. Why he bothers to try and hide it after revealing to the older man some of the abilities he's experienced so far, she is unsure.

She watches in fascination as the environment inside completely changes. At this point, she can feel the boy's energy pressing against her own, trying to push it away, but she is too interested to care. Wondering just how far she can push it, she presses harder. _Show me something_ , she says to herself.

A ring of bright, electric energy pops into existence around the child's waist, and her eyes widen behind her sunglasses. Beside her, Bertrand whispers, "Impossible." The same sentiment echoes in Spectra's own mind, but the thought excites her. If that ring is what she thinks it is…

If _Plasmius_ found about this…

Yes, this was something she would keep from Skulker. She'd have to make sure Bertrand kept his mouth shut as well.

She is so distracted by her own thoughts about the implications of the ring that she doesn't notice Danny fighting back against himself. It throws her off, then, when a sudden wave of energy pushes at her. It is the boy's own energy, and though she doesn't know it, it is the same energy telling Edward to turn and face the window.

She is taken aback so much that she loses a grasp on her invisibility for just a moment. She recovers quickly only to look through the window again and see the teacher staring directly at her. Her stomach drops to her feet, and she freezes. Did he see something when she'd been recovering from the sudden onslaught?

She only relaxes when he turns back to face his student.

Bertrand, however, does not recover as well as she does. He sits on the ground under the window, fully visible, clearly shaken. "Now don't you think this was a bad idea?" he grumbles.

"Get invisible, you idiot!" Spectra hisses, waving an arm frantically at him. He obeys, but she has given up. As much as she doesn't want to admit it, she was shaken up by the sudden burst of energy too. She had not been expecting that at all, and it had really thrown her for a loop.

Maybe the boy was even more powerful than she'd originally thought.

"Come on, let's just get out of here," she mutters, taking off into the sky. Bertrand, all too happy to oblige, follows closely behind.

After a few minutes of silence, Bertrand speaks up, albeit timidly. "Does this mean that he's… you know?"

Spectra considers it for a moment. "It's too early to tell," she says finally. "It probably wasn't anything significant. He's still barely in control, didn't you see how hard he was fighting against himself? I bet it was just his energy getting out of control."

Bertrand stays silent, but she can tell he doesn't believe her. Frankly, she doesn't even believe her own words, but she doesn't really want to think about the other option.

"What are you gonna do about it?" Bertrand asks her.

"Patience is key, Bertrand," she replies after a minute. "We have to keep watching him. We have to see the extent of his abilities. Only then will we be able to do anything about it. I don't want to do anything prematurely."

She doesn't say anything about avoiding Plasmius. That went unsaid.

If Plasmius found out about what they'd seen, all hell would break loose.

* * *

… _is anyone still out there?_

 _This chapter is ridiculously late, and I am so sorry about that. Not only is college crazy busy (but crazy fun!), Danny and Mr. Lancer would just not cooperate with me on this chapter. Even now, I'm not quite happy with how it turned out, but it's better than he direction it was going originally._

 _No promises as to when the next chapter is going to come out, but hopefully it won't be as difficult to write as this chapter! If I'm lucky, I miiiight be able to get it out before Christmas, but like I said, no promises. However, we'll be visiting one of my favorite characters in the show, one we haven't heard from yet and one who I am excited to write for ;)_

 _Thanks for bearing with me, and as always, thoughts and comments are appreciated!_


End file.
